


The Substitute

by Jordan_C_Wilde



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Drama, F/F, Slice of Life, There will be romance, probably, tags will be updated to avoid spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26394982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jordan_C_Wilde/pseuds/Jordan_C_Wilde
Summary: What would you do, if a world that had rejected you was to welcome you back in?It's that question that Chessie Vaughn, a Luna Nova dropout has to ask herself upon receiving a very enticing letter from her old Academy. Follow along as she tries to get her foot back into the world of magic after a terrible accident during her time as a student cut her career short.
Relationships: Barbara Parker/Lotte Yanson, Diana Cavendish/Atsuko "Akko" Kagari, Hannah England/Amanda O'Neill
Comments: 36
Kudos: 51





	1. Prologue: She who plays with fire

“Chessie’s log entry 431. I think I’ve finally cracked it! The secret to unlocking access to the Maelstrom! With this, I will not only become one of the most esteemed witches to ever attend Luna Nova, but I will also revolutionize the world of witchcraft in a way that hasn’t been seen since the Nine roamed the earth.

It has taken years of research and months of planning, but I have finally been able to fill in the gaps in the rune circle. I didn’t have much to go on, initially, apart from the notes of that crazy old hag Dorothea Von Hägersdorf, and those weren’t particularly helpful. Note to myself, I need to brush up on my middle-high German.

But I digress. Von Hägersdorf was apparently the last person to try gaining access to the Maelstrom power a couple hundred years ago, but, to her peril, she got something wrong. I’m sure she would have figured out what eventually if it weren’t for the fact that the result of her last experiment was a huge crater in the German countryside. 

But her notes were conclusive enough to set me on the right track. I am positive I figured out what that old crone was missing, and I am now about to activate my Maelstrom Portal for the first time!

I can hardly contain myself, I think the excitement is going to make me burst! I should have enough time for a test run before my roommates return. 

I’m going to keep the tape running and describe what is happening in as much detail as I can manage. If this is successful, I’ll need to see about smuggling a camera onto the school premises. But for now, I think an audio description will suffice. 

Right! Enough prattling. I, Chessie Vaughn, am about to make history!

So, just a little bit of magic to get the reaction started; Yes, just like that! It’s working. The rune circle is using the magic energy I provided to it to draw from the Maelstrom itself. Okay, it should now run just fine on its own. And it does! It Worked, it really worked! 

I can’t believe I pulled it off, I really opened the Maelstrom! Right. Now comes the real interesting part: tapping into the energy. I need all my focus for this, so I probably won’t talk much.

..

Yes this- this is it! This is- wait. Wait no! No! Stop, this is too much I can’t. I can’t hold it back anymore, the energy is- it burns! IT BURNS I CAN’T STOP IT! IT BURNS! HELP! HELP ME! SOMEONE-”

The old cassette player let out a sharp ‘click’ as the worn out tape reached the end of its run. Chessie’s eyes had been trained on the same spot on the ceiling for the entire duration of the cassette’s playtime.

The cigarette that had faded out in her lips several replays of the tape earlier was leaving a bitter, abrasive taste in her mouth. Her right, unbandaged arm moved over to her bedside table and found the button to wind the tape back on the old cassette player with almost automatic ease.

“Just a couple more hours now,” she thought as a car driving past on the street below her apartment briefly illuminated the cluttered, unorganized mess of her bedroom. She knew her alarm clock would ring in a few hours, but she also knew that she wouldn’t get any sleep tonight, much like the previous ones.

She had known this day would come for weeks, and yet she still didn’t feel ready for it. The letter she had received from Luna Nova Academy lay torn on her nightstand in front of her cassette player.

Despite her first reaction to receiving a letter from her old school being to tear it up and throw it in the trash, she couldn’t help but feel curious. Half an hour and a roll of adhesive tape later, she was holding her official invitation to join the faculty of Luna Nova Academy.

She had turned the letter over in her hands several times, looking for the punchline. There was none. In her hand she was holding an honest to goodness, stamped with the official Luna Nova seal from the desk of headmistress Holbrooke summons to work as a professor instructing conjuration and summoning.

Her reaction upon parsing that information was to rip the letter back up again and lay down for a while. 

Luna Nova. That name meant so many memories to her, and most of them weren’t even that bad. It’s just that the bad ones were really, really bad. The kind of bad you’d never even want to think about if you didn’t absolutely have to. 

After a depression nap that lasted a good twelve hours, she once again found herself staring at the now twice shredded message from her old college. Despite not wanting to go back there at all, she had to admit that her interest was piqued.

And so, one thing led to another, weeks passed, letters were exchanged. A lot of letters, in fact, that made some very compelling points on headmistress’ Holbrooke’s part. Like money.

Money was something Chessie lacked. Well, she was actually lacking many things, but money was her chief concern at the moment. There wasn’t much work out there for witches nowadays, and with her innate handicap she found it especially hard to get some employment.

Tourists now and again have hired her for a tour of the “magical sights” around the area, most of which was either completely made up or of such little relevance to someone not indoctrinated into the world of magic that it might as well be.

Just as she was about to repeat her mantra of “Just a few more hours now” to herself, her alarm clock suddenly started blaring, jarring her so hard she sat bolt-upright on her bed.   
Morning had come earlier than she would have liked.

She looked out of the window and saw the solid ink black night sky over her hometown slowly give way to the light blueish-white of the approaching morning.

“Well, here goes nothing, I guess.”

She dragged her tired body into the bathroom and prepared for her morning routine. Standing in front of the mirror, she slowly and methodically unwrapped the bandages on her left arm.

She felt the appendage fall limply to her side as the last piece of magic infused gauze fell away. Over the years she had gotten quite skilled at bandaging her arm on her own, managing to do it faster than most trained nurses. Soon enough, her left arm was covered in fresh snow white bandages from fingertips to shoulder, nearly mummifying the appendage. 

She took up her wand from the edge of the washing basin and with one idle flick and a flash of green, she could “feel” the arm coming to life again. An illusion, of course. The nerve endings in her arm up to her shoulder were practically dead, and the only way she could even sort of use it was by wrapping it with special gauze and casting a telekinesis spell on it every day.

Her gaze met her reflection’s in the mirror. One grey-green eye staring back at her, looking black rimmed and tried, next to the black bandage that covered the other. She idly checked the magic seal on the black fabric with her gaze and set about covering it with an additional layer of white gauze. No sense in showing it off to the world.

The rest of her morning was as uneventful as would be expected of her. She washed up, brushed her teeth and packed up the rest of her belongings. She was just about to leave her apartment when her gaze fell on her reflection in the hallway mirror. 

She was almost shocked at how professional she looked. Sans the bandages, she might even conceivably pass for a proper witch for once in her life. She was wearing a Luna Nova uniform for practical classes, simply because she couldn’t find any clothes that would conceivably have been deemed proper for a witch to wear. She inwardly cursed herself for owning 50 sweaters and just as many sweat pants.

“You’ve looked worse, Vaughn,” Was the best she could do in terms of pep talk, as she placed the pointy witch’s hat on her short blonde side-cut. She hoped that the big brim would cover the bandaged wrapped around half her face, at least for a bit.

With her bag slung over her shoulder and her broom in hand, she marched out of the front door, still unsure of herself. She knew a chance like this wouldn’t come again and that she’d hate herself even more if she didn’t take it. But on the other hand this also bore the risk of turning into an absolute mess and knowing her luck that’s probably what was going to happen.

And even so, she didn’t hesitate as she mounted her broom and took off toward the nearest leyline terminal.

As the cool morning air caressed the unbandaged side of her face and the town behind her receded into the horizon, she couldn’t help but smile a little, a luxury that she didn’t afford herself often.

“Professor Chessie Vaughn.” she mused, rolling the words around on her tongue for a bit. 

“I could get used to that one.”


	2. Day 1: Reunions

“What do you mean ‘I won’t be allowed to call myself a professor?’” Chessie exclaimed, not bothering to hide her exasperation. 

“As I said before, Miss Vaugh, since you technically never graduated this academy and have pursued no further education in magic we cannot allow you to carry that title.” Professor Finnelan spoke in that stern authoritative tone that Chessie knew all too well from her time as a student here.

Even though ten years had passed since she was forced to drop out, she could have sworn that Finnelan hadn’t aged a day. The stern lines framing the teacher’s face looked practically unmoved, as did her iron hard gaze that always seemed to be doing its best to drill down to a person’s very soul.

“Ah,” Chessie countered, putting her hands on her hips demonstratively, “so you’re saying I can’t be a professor because I don’t have a diploma, but I can still teach here nonetheless? Is that what you’re getting at?” She bobbed on her heels for emphasis.

Headmistress Holbrooke, who had been sitting quietly at her desk, massaged her temples and heaved a quiet sigh, “Yes Chessie, that is what we are getting at.”

Chessie felt as if she had found an opening and pressed the issue further, “And how come? You never specified why you wanted me to teach here so desperately.”

“Well, you see,” the headmistress spoke, supporting herself on her staff to sit upright at her desk, “we have had a situation with one of our, now, ex-staff members recently and it set us back by quite a bit. Cut a long story short, we are in need of competent faculty personnel.”

Chessie knew, of course, what Holbrooke meant by situation. She had been following the events around Croix Meridies and her misguided attempt at unlocking the grant Triskellion as closely as the local news coverage would allow, and she had to admit she found the entire ordeal quite entertaining.

Nevertheless, the headmistress’s rather direct answer caught her a bit off guard. She wasn’t used to the old witch being so direct. “So why recruit a dropout like me? There must have been much better choices for the position, and I can’t be the only one you tried to get on board.”

“You’re the only one that agreed to take the job,” said professor Finnelan, her unwavering gaze betraying the slightest hint of regret.

For a second, Chessie was at a loss for words. A befuddled “What?” was the only thing that she managed to get out.

“You were the only person who agreed to take this position,” the professor repeated, a bit more empathetically this time. “In fact, you were one of the few who even replied. The other candidates either already had a job practicing witchcraft somewhere or were pursuing completely different careers outside of magic.”

“Oh, so you’re going to tell me that unlocking the grand Triskelion DIDN’T magically fix all your problems.” Again, she didn’t bother hiding neither the edge nor the sarcasm bleeding into her voice.

“Chessie please be reasonable, we didn’t mean to slight you, we just-”

“You just what exactly?” She found it hard to control the anger that was suddenly boiling up within her, “You thought it would be funny just to invite me for shits’n’giggles? I would have loved to have seen the board meeting on this one; must have been a real hoot. ‘Oh yeah, let’s invite that screwup Vaughn too, I bet that miserable failure doesn’t have anything better to do and-”

“Miss Vaughn!” Just like back in her school days, Finnelan’s stern voice was enough to shut her up in a heartbeat, no matter how worked up she was. “We understand how this must look to you, but I am afraid you are interpreting our intentions completely wrong. If we thought of you as a ‘screwup’, as you put it, we wouldn’t have even bothered writing you. Now, it’s true that you weren’t our first choice, you are correct in that assumption. But please do not, for a second, assume that we as a faculty don’t value your particular skill set. In fact, some of the things you did during conjuration class have never been replicated, even by our most skilled students. Or faculty members, for that matter.”

Chessie’s anger had abated and had been replaced by confusion. She just looked at Finnelan, waiting for the professor to continue. When she did, Chessie thought for a moment that her gaze was softening a little. “The bottom line, Miss Vaughn, is that we need you here and we all think that you would be an asset to the faculty. And to that extent we would like to make you an offer. Complete one semester teaching here and show us that you can pass your exemplary skills in the fields of summoning, conjuration and telekinesis on to the students. If you can do that, we will not only award you with a diploma, but we will also bestow the title of professor onto you. Does that sound to your liking?”

Chessie hadn’t quite processed what Finnelan had just said when the word “yes” left her lips.

“Very well then,” the tension visibly left Finnelan’s posture making her look almost casual for once, “if all of that is cleared up, I think you will find these most useful.”

With a flick of her wand, the older witch floated a stack of thick, leather-bound books over to where Chessie was standing. She barely caught the heavy reading material when Finnelan relinquished her magical grip on them.

Despite wheezing under the sudden weight in her arms, Chessie smiled. “Well, alright then. Is there anything else?” 

Despite the harsh scolding she had just received, she felt relieved. As if an enormous weight had been lifted off of her.

Maybe it was the fact that she had gotten to yell at Finnelan after all these years of stewing in her own misery or the underhanded compliment she had just received from her old professor.

In any case, Finnelan put her hand up to her chin, clearly going over some form of checklist in her head. When she was done she flicked her wand again. “Just this,” she said, levitating a key over to Chessie and gently laying it down on top of the book pile that she was carrying, “the key to your personal room. We’ve also taken the liberty to deposit some staff uniforms in your closet, so you can change out of that outdated uniform of yours.”

For a second Chessie mulled over whether she should challenge the old professor on her use of the word “outdated” but decided against it. She’d already received her earful for the day. 

“Well, if that’s all then, I think I shall excuse myself for the time being.” she said, having already turned on her heels towards the door. But before she had taken two steps, Finnelan called out to her again, “Oh Miss Vaughn, one more thing.”

Chessie stopped and looked over her shoulder, trying to ignore the heft of the books in her arms. “Yes, ma’am?”

“The way you described yourself earlier, ‘miserable failure’. Please refrain from doing that in the future. First and foremost, it’s very unbecoming of a teacher to use such foul language and secondly you shouldn’t put yourself down like that. You shouldn’t let your handicap define you like that.”

Ow, that was a sting to Chessie’s pride. She had to swallow hard to get the lump in her throat down to answer. “Understood ma’am. I’ll be taking my leave now.” 

As soon as she had pulled the heavy wood door shut behind her with her elbow, she let out a long, drawn out sigh. Well, that wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t any worse than getting chewed out as a student here. 

Speaking of students, she was getting some weird glances from some passing students. She couldn’t figure out what part of her looked the most intriguing: the faded out school uniform, the bandages or the look on her face that read ‘they picked me up from under a bridge and I want to go back to bed.’

Either way, she chose to ignore one particularly forward student, who when passing her turned to her friend and mumbled something that sounded like “What the hell is up with that freak?” For one, she was used to sidelong glances and snide comments by this point and two, she wasn’t about to compromise her new position as a teacher by shouting at a student before she’d even had a chance to teach a class.

Ignoring other passing glances she tried to drink in the atmosphere. It really was the way she remembered it: the ancient corridors with their polished wood floors, the high-arched, stained glass windows and the rooms bustling with students getting ready for all manner of magical lessons. She saw young witches, starry-eyed and completely enamoured with this wonderful world of magic that they had just stepped into. The look in their eyes brought her back to her first year at Luna Nova.

All the mischief she and her teammates had gotten into, all the exams they had crammed for. The earfuls they had received from their professors. 

For a second she felt as if she had traveled back in time, as if she was just another student here hurrying to get to class on time. That blissful moment, however, got cut short when she bumped face first into someone as she rounded a corner and promptly landed on her backside, her books scattering all over the floor.

Her irritated “Hey, watch where you’re going!” got stuck in her throat the moment she saw just who she had bowled over. The slender Witch who had herself landed butt first on the floor, was staring at her wide eyed as if in complete shock. Her long, snow white hair stood in stark contrast to her emerald green eyes, which shimmered with a hint of recognition behind a pair of thick prescription glasses.

“Chessie?” The white-haired witch asked, her eyes growing even wider, “Chessie Vaughn? Is that really you?”

Realization set in for Chessie. “Lilliane?”

Before she could get any more words out, the other witch had somehow closed the distance between them and had locked her into a bear hug so tight Chessie felt her organs being compressed to a quarter of their size

“It really is you!” Lilliane exclaimed, “I can’t believe it!”

“Y-yeah me neither,” Chessie wheezed, with the last of the air remaining in her lungs, “can you ease off a little?”

“Oh! Oh, sorry I didn’t mean to- I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No, no, I’m pretty sure that taste of blood in my mouth was there before you compacted my ribcage, Lil.” Chessie said as she caught her breath and slowly rose to her feet. 

Her former teammate did the same, not taking her eyes off of her. “Gosh it’s so good to see you, Chessie! But seriously, what exactly are you doing here?”

Chessie felt another smile creep across her lips as she answered, “Well, I got a couple of friendly invitation letters from this fine academy, practically begging me to become a teacher here, and, you know, I had a free spot in my schedule so I figured I’d give it a try.”

The mixture of confusion and joy was something that Chessie found absolutely priceless. “No way! You’re a professor now?!”

“Not exactly, no.” Chessie said, starting to gather up the books that had fallen to the floor during the collision. “I’m more of a substitute here. But enough about me. What are you doing here?”

Lilliane smiled, helping her friend with her belongings. “I’m the school physician here.”

Now it was Chessie’s turn to be dumbstruck. “No way, so you managed to become a doctor after all?”

“Told you I would,” Lilliane stuck out her tongue in response. “Doctor Lilliane Ashe, at your service.”

Getting back to her feet, she handed Chessie the books she had gathered, taking a look at one of the covers. “The foundations of Conjuration?” She read out loud, raising an eyebrow, “I thought you had outgrown stuff like this a long time ago.”

“Well, it’s better to brush up on the basics before I try teaching them to the kids.” she waved her bandaged arm dismissively, trying not to blush in front of her friend. She took the book from Lilliane and started making her way down the corridor again.

“So you’re gonna be teaching Conjuration and Summoning?” Lilliane surmised, “That does suit you I have to admit.”

Chessie just shrugged in reply, “I guess. Finnelan and Holbrooke certainly seem to think so. They made it clear that I wasn’t their first choice, though.”

“You? Not being their first choice for Summoning and Conjuration? Yeah that’s a good one. Last I heard, Finnelan is still trying to figure out how you summoned that Manticore in the cafeteria.”

Chessie snorted at the memory. She would have loved to see the old witch try in vain to reconstruct the rune circle that she had so meticulously crafted over the course of an entire night. 

Having shared a brief giggle with her friend, Lilliane’s face turned more serious. “Listen, I know this might be a bit forward of me to ask but I need to know-”

“It’s about my arm and eye, right?” Chessie cut her off, trying to avoid her friend’s gaze.

The white-haired witch nodded, “Yes. I know this is a touchy subject for you, but I would like to know a bit for-”

“For science. Professional interest and all that. You aren’t the first to say that.’’ This time Chessie actually bothered to hide the irritation welling up inside her by staring straight ahead and speaking in as much of a deadpan manner as she could muster.

Lilliane, miffed about being cut off like that, overtook Chessie and postured herself in front of the blonde witch. A gesture that wasn’t really helped by her barely 5 foot statue and the lab coat that looked like it was 2 sizes too big for her, nearly reaching all the way down to her ankles.

“No, not just for Science! It’s because I want to help you, Chessie.”

“Help me?” Chessie laughed, pushing past the doctor, “How are you gonna do that? With a topical cream?”

Stepping into Chessie’s path once again, she spoke up, “Would you please listen to me? I’m a Witchdoctor. I know you’ve been in and out of all sorts of hospitals after your accident and that no one really knew how to help you, but hear me out on this. I might have a way to make you better.”

Chessie, who was in the process of pushing past Lilliane again, stopped mid-step. Now that she had her attention, Lilliane continued, “Over the last couple of years medicinal magic has advanced to the point where people who have had similar accidents to you have been partially cured. Fully, even, in some cases.”

“Alright now you’ve got me listening.” Although still sceptical, she was very much intrigued. It might have been close to ten years since she’d last met Lilliane, but she knew for a fact that the white-haired witch didn’t get this serious over nothing.

“Excellent. Now, I can’t get into the nitty-gritty details here, but the long and short of it is that there is a technique that allows for the restoration of nerve endings that have been damaged by magic. It’s really interesting, actually, how you can use restorative magic to-”

“Doctor Ashe!” A new voice cut her off mid-sentence. A second later, a blonde student pulling another student along behind her came racing around the corner and almost bowled the two of them over.

Before either of them had even fully processed what was happening the blonde student spoke up. “I’m very sorry, Doctor Ashe, but we need your assistance.”

“Calm down Diana, what happened?” Lilliane asked, without missing a beat.

The brunette student raised her left hand, with which she had been covering her face, to reveal a blood-stained smile. “I fell off my broom again Doc.” She sounded extremely cheerful for someone who was currently leaking bodily fluids from both her nose and split lips.

Lilliane tutted, “Oh Akko, didn’t I tell you to be more careful?” She turned back to Chessie with an apologetic look on her face, “Listen, I gotta go. Swing by the infirmary when you have the time and we can get into more detail, okay?”

Without waiting for an answer, she took off down the hall with Diana and Akko trailing close behind her. 

“Well that’s a thing that happened.” She mumbled, still processing everything that Lilliane had said to her. Between meeting her old best friend, finding out that said best friend had become a doctor and there apparently being a chance for her to regain the use of her arm, her brain had gotten stuck along the way.

Resolving to try to work through all of that later, she quickly shook off the confusion and continued on towards the faculty dormitory. As a student, this place had been absolutely off limits to her, the stairs leading up to the teacher’s private quarters seeming so foreboding to her.

They still did, even as she ascended them. At the top she found nothing but a quite regular looking and frankly anticlimactic hallway. 

“Didn’t really know what I expected.” She mumbled as she paced down the row of doors. 

Any more mythical fantasies she might have had about the teachers’ dorms got shattered when she opened the door to her room. It looked remarkably like what she remembered her old room here looking like. Only this one had many more empty shelves and only one bed.

With a huff, she sat the stack of books down on her desk, taking the topmost one with her. As she sat down on her bed, she went over her schedule again. 

“Wake up at 5:30, morning routine as usual, should try to see Lil before 7 so I can see what she was on about with that whole making me better business. Class starts at 9, which gives me two hours to prepare. Should be plenty.”

She reached into her uniform pocket and pulled out a pack of her poison of choice. The pack of cigarettes looked at her tauntingly, tempting her to have a quick smoke before hitting the books. And she might have been able to resist the urge, if she had been a stronger person.

As it stood she had to settle for feeling guilty as she pulled out her wand and used it to light up. She felt her muscles relax a little as the acrid blue smoke bit into her lungs.

She sat there on the bed, trying to find some enjoyment in the comically bitter taste of her cigarette. Her gaze fell onto her wand. Bent and warped from the same accident that had left her in this sorry state.

The heat of the Maelstrom discoloured the metal tip. A purple-blue that ran out into a soft gold along the length of the metal part. The wooden grip was charred and cracked, but still she didn’t wanna give it up. After all, it suited her perfectly.

She gently put it down on the bed beside her and opened the book, her cigarette dangling loosely from her lips.

She couldn’t help but smile as her eyes flitted over the first few words. “Summoning and Conjuration are by far the most difficult disciplines of magic to master and thus carry as noble a distinction as the venerable fields of alchemy and medicinal magic.”

And so, much like she did all those years ago, she found herself slipping into the pages of these same textbooks without even noticing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What will Chessie have in store for her students on day 2? Can Lilliane really help her friend?  
> Get the answers to these questions and many more in the next chapter of: The Substitute
> 
> Again, Feedback is much appreciated.
> 
> Thank you very much for reading!
> 
> -Jordan


	3. Day 2: Baby Steps

“Remind me again, why you had me get up at an ungodly time like this?” Lilliane yawned, preparing some fresh bandages.

“Because,” Chessie tried her best to sound casual despite the fact that she felt as if she could keel over dead at any second, “I need to get a head start today. Want to get some preparations done before class starts.”

Lilliane turned towards her friend, holding her wand. “I knew you’d really lean into this, but isn’t this a bit excessive? Have you even slept at all tonight?”

“Yeah sure, plenty.” she lied. 

Lilliane gave her that look; The one that read ‘I know you’re trying to bullshit me but I am far too tired to press the issue’

“So about this treatment,” Chessie began and let her voice trail off as she saw that the tip of Lillian’s wand was already glowing.

That comment seemed to at least get Lilliane to fully wake up. “Oh, right. I haven’t told you how it’s gonna go down yet, right?”

“No, but I’m assuming you’ll have to zap me at some point.”

The doctor twirled her wand with a giggle. “Observant as always. But that part will come later. First, I’m going to have to ask you to undress-”

“Oh, Kinky.”

“Undress your arm.” Lillian spoke, the early time of day not helping her growing irritation with her friend. “I need to see what I am dealing with.”

Chessie hesitantly pulled off the a-shirt she was wearing and set about unwrapping her left arm. It had been such a long time since someone had seen her like this. It felt wrong to her, like she was bearing a part of herself to the world that she should hide forever.

As she was undoing the bandages on her arm, she noticed Lilliane stepping closer. “While you’re busy doing this,” the doctor said with a smile, “I’d like to take a look at this.” 

Chessie’s heart stopped when she noticed Lilliane’s hand moving towards the bandages around her eye. “Don’t!” she yelped, her hand shooting up to catch her friend’s before she could make contact with her face. 

For a moment, time seemed to be in suspension as Chessie had Lilliane’s wrist in a vice grip, staring at the doctor with obvious fear drawn across her face.

“Uh,” the doctor broke the silence, “Chessie?”  
As if struck by lightning, the blonde witch released her grip on Lilliane’s wrist. “I’m,” she started trying to avoid eye contact, “I’m sorry. I don’t-”

“It’s okay.” Lil smiled, rubbing her wrist. “Let’s just focus on your arm right now.”

With that, Chessie let the last of the wrappings fall to the floor, exposing the gray, dead flesh underneath. With the magic gauze gone, the appendage hung limply by her side, its dead nerve endings unable to send signals to its atrophied muscles.

“Alright,” Lilliane stepped closer again, carefully brushing the glowing tip of her wands against Chessie’s arm, “let’s start with a simple diagnostic spell. Can you feel anything at all when I do this.”

Chessie closed her eyes and focussed. She tried probing the space where her arm should be with her mind, as if reaching out into a pitch black hallway in the dark. At first there was nothing there, as if her arm simply didn’t exist or wasn’t connected to her body in any meaningful way. Seconds passed, before suddenly she could feel something extremely weak returning from this dead part of her body.

“I feel something very, very faint I think.”

“Aha!” the doctor flicked the wand away with a smile, “Good! That’s very good!”

“It is?”

“Yes Chessie!” Lilliane skipped back over to her desk to scribble something down in a battered old notebook. “This means your nerves aren’t dead.”

Chessie looked down at her dead arm sceptically “You sure about that one Lil?”

“Well they’re obviously very very damaged, but there is a good chance we might be able to repair them.”

“Repair them?” Chessie raised an eyebrow, “if it was that simple don’t you think any of the other hundreds of other doctors I have been to would have tried that?”

Whipping out her wand again, Lilliane spoke up, “Well, you see,” she scratched the back of her head with the metallic tip of her magic tool, “this technique is fairly new and not really widely established yet.”

“Ah. And what exactly is this ‘technique’ going to consist of?”

The smile that was drawn across Lil’s pale features stood in stark contrast to the answer she gave to that question. “Regenerative reconditioning. It’s basically a compound spell that consists of a high frequency magic pulse that is designed to stimulate the damaged nerve endings, and a healing spell that will latch onto the nerves itself and amplify the pulse running through them to aid in the healing process.”

Although impressed, Chessie still wasn’t sure about all of this. “This sounds like it’s going to hurt.”

“It might.”

“Hang on, what do you mean ‘it might’?”

“Exactly what I said. Well, no use in babbling, let’s get this show on the road.” 

And before Chessie could even protest, Lilliane had already stabbed her wand into Chessie’s bicep. Although she flinched on reflex, after a second she noticed that she didn’t feel anything. As it should have been really, all things considered. “Wait that’s it?” she asked, feeling more than a bit silly for flinching.

“Hmm?” Lil’s gaze was fixed entirely on her wand. The green glow began to steadily increase in intensity. Along with the glow, it was also now beginning to emit a humming noise. Just as Chessie was about to make another snide remark that would have gone somewhere along the lines of “Are you sure it’s supposed to be making that sound?” she began feeling a faint prickling.

Out of all the emotions that suddenly welled up inside her as she felt the feeling become stronger, all the things she wanted to say, the only thing that managed to escape her lips was an astonished “Holy crap.” Her left arm, the arm that had been practically dead meat for ten years, was coming to live again!

That astonished exclamation was soon followed by another, much more profane one as the prickling turned into an outright stinging. She bit back all the foul swears that she wanted to spit out right about now and gripped the edge of the sickbed that she was sitting on so hard with her good hand, she thought that the steel frame might give in.

With each second that passed the pain intensified, threatening to overwhelm Chessie who was so used to that part of her body not feeling anything at all. But nonetheless, she didn’t allow herself to scream. She bit her lip hard, praying in her head that it would stop, but she didn’t wave Lilliane off.

And suddenly it stopped. As suddenly as the pain had flared up, it abated leaving only a faint prickling afterglow. Panting and sweating, she finally unclenched her hand and turned to her friend. 

“Is that all you got?” Chessie croaked, wiping the cold sweat from her brow. Her voice was shaky, but still she wore that cocky smile that Lilliane had always admired even when they were both just students.

“For now, yes.” the white haired doctor said, holstering her wand underneath her lab coat. She was scribbling something on that old notepad again. “How are you feeling?” she went on, fixing her deep green eyes on her patient.

“Sick.” That wasn’t a lie. Between an intense headache, swimming vision and nausea, she could barely make up her mind what was ailing her the worst. 

Lilliane frowned. “Anything else?” she said with that undertone of someone who had expected an entirely different answer.

Chessie closed her eyes and took a deep breath to focus herself. After a couple of moments of introspection, they flitted open again and found the doctor’s stare.

“My arm hurts.”

Again, Chessie had no idea how, but all of a sudden Lilliane was all up in her face again, eyes wide as saucers and words coming out of her mouth like a waterfall, with all pretense of stoic medical professionalism out the window.  
“OHMYGODCANYOUDESCRIBEHOWANDWHATYOUREFEELINGPLEASEINEEDTHISFORMY-”

“Lemme slow you down there, Lil.” Chessie said, pushing her friend back with her good arm.

Lilliane took a second to compose herself and wipe what appeared to be drool from her lips, before speaking up again, “Oh right, I’m sorry. Can you please describe that pain in more detail?”

“Well,” Chessie started, running her good hand over the spot where Lilliane had stuck the wand into her arm, “it feels like some really faint muscle cramps. Like, really distant.”

“Interesting, very interesting.” Lilliane was scribbling in her notebook again. Chessie was beginning to wonder what she was even writing in that thing, but she didn’t feel like prying right now. 

“Do you think you can try moving it, even a bit?”

Chessie focussed for a moment, then shook her head. Lilliane looked a bit disappointed for a second before her face lightened up again and she spoke with a brilliantly confident smile. “Right, that would have been too easy. But,” she clapped her notebook shut for emphasis, “it’s a start. I think if we put you on a regime of one treatment a day, you might be able to attain limited movement in your fingers again in a couple of months.”

“Months?” Chessie guffawed, “Lil, do you have any idea how much that hurt?”

“I know, I know, it’s not exactly pleasant but trust me. There are studies proving this method’s efficacy.”

“Studies? I can’t imagine this getting past any ethics committee.”

“Oh what do those squares know.”

“Wait what did you say?”

“Uh, nothing!” Lilliane hastily stepped closer and started dressing Chessie’s arm in an attempt to change the topic. “So, the way you had it wrapped earlier.” she said, beginning to wrap the gauze around her friend’s fingers.

“Yeah what about it?”

“Well I noticed it was a bit stiff.” Lilliane said, bandaging each finger with swift dexterous movements that spoke of years of practice. “Did you teach yourself how to do it?”

“Well more or less. I mean I had to after they released me from the hospital, so I guess it might not be as pretty as something a professional might do, but I think I’m reasonably good at it.”

“You’re selling yourself short here, you did a pretty good job, all things considered.” She was up to the elbow and as she worked, Chessie couldn’t help but wonder what those fingers would feel like on her skin. 

Realizing where that train of thought was headed, she quickly shook it off and tried to keep the conversation going before she found herself accidentally starting to feel things she shouldn’t feel for her old academy teammate.

“So, about those studies you mentioned.”

Lilliane froze for a second, her eyes widening in what appeared to be shock “Yes, what about them?”

“You really think I might be able to use my arm again one day?” Chessie cringed inwardly at how hopeful she sounded. She didn’t wanna come off as desperate or clutching at straws, she just thought her life could be a great deal easier without having to puppeteer her left arm all day long.

Lilliane resumed and promptly finished up bandaging her friend. “Well it’s hard to say. While there have been cases of people making full recoveries from similar injuries, none have been as severe as yours.” 

“Ah,” Chessie said as she slid on her shirt again and hopped off the bed. “I was already beginning to think this would be easy or straight forward.” She produced her wand and cast the telekinesis spell on her bandages with practiced ease.

“Don’t worry Chess, I’ll be with you every step of the way.” Lilliane said, putting a hand on Chessie’s left shoulder with a sweet, genuine smile on her lips.

Something about that hit Chessie like a punch to the gut. She didn’t know whether it was the friendly contact, the smile or that nickname. The nickname that she hadn’t heard for ten years.

“Chess?”

She snapped out of it. “Oh, oh right. Yeah. Yeah, we’ll do this together Lil.”

“Like in the old days!” The doctor gave her friend a thumbs up, causing Chessie to chuckle. 

Just like the old days. Chessie was really beginning to warm up to the whole idea of working together with Lilliane to find a cure for her condition, when a thought struck her. 

“Hey Lil, what time is it?”

“About 5:30. Why’d’you ask?” She yawned, apparently remembering how early it was.

Chessie smiled while putting her shirt back on. “Told you I had some stuff to set up. I’ll tell you all about it later. I really need to get going though.”

Lilliane wasn’t really sure if her friend had heard her goodbyes before she disappeared out of the door. But she didn’t really care. Smiling to herself, she picked up her notebook and spoke along as she scribbled down something on an unused page.

“First experiment was a success. Adverse side effects are stronger than expected, but nerve endings respond to stimulus. Need to iron out the overagitation of the peripheral nervous system. I should be able to get it to work, though. Subject complained about immense pain, but that was to be expected. I just hope she’ll hold out until this test run is through.”

_________________________________________________________________________

“Alright everyone, quiet down! Class is now in session.” 

Chessie was impressed at how authoritative she managed to sound, despite her nerves going like crazy. She had spent the last two hours preparing the classroom and although she didn’t like to brag, she thought she had done a pretty good job at it. 

The old practical classroom looked like she remembered it from back in the day. She actively had to stop herself from becoming nostalgic at the sight of the double desk arrangements, the high arched windows that looked like they’d last been cleaned fifty years ago and the walls still adorned with the very same posters and magical diagrams that she had memorized during boring lecture moments.

The blackboard behind her was adorned with the words “Miss Vaughn”, with special emphasis placed on the word “Miss.” She wasn’t a professor after all. But she tried to see the positive side of that: Since she wasn’t a professor, she figured she’d get through with a couple of casual dress code violations.

And so, with her standard Luna Nova Teacher’s uniform shortened to skirt length, she stood in front of her class of about 20 students, trying her best not to break out into a nervous sweat and sound as tough as possible.

“My name is Miss Vaughn and as you’ve probably guessed already, I will be instructing you in Summoning and Conjuration. This will be a relatively straight forward class, designed to take you from the very basics to advanced techniques like summoning familiars. It won’t be easy, but I promise you if you put in some work, you’re all going to pass. Now, before we get going, are there any questions you have pertaining to myself or this class?”

She looked on as a couple of the young witches before her raised their hands tentatively. She had purposefully arranged them in random pairs of two for the practical parts of her lessons. In her experience, pairing up works wonders for getting students to help each other out and amplify the learning effect.

“Okay, let’s see.” she hummed, hovering a clipboard with the seating chart in front of her. “Are any of these questions about my bandages?”

Again she watched as about half the students who had previously raised their hands lowered them again. Chessie sighed, “Alright before you guys start circulating any rumors about me, I’ll just fill you in real quick. This will actually tie in perfectly well with the course guidelines and safety instructions.”

She paused and raised her left arm, watching the students follow it with their eyes like a bunch of cats would follow a laser pointer. “This right here is the result of me messing with things I shouldn’t have; of me trying to punch above my weight. Now it’s not my intention to scare you or to make you think summoning and conjuration is inherently dangerous. No, what I want you to see is that it can get dangerous if you don’t respect it or know your boundaries.”

She lowered her hand again. “This happened ten years ago while I was still a student here. I went against any advice given to me by my instructors as well as school regulations against experimenting outside of the classrooms and without supervision. I got cocky, and it cost me my arm and eye.”

A murmur went through the class, which she waited out before going on. “And before you ask, the reason I can move my arm is because of some magic trickery and lots of practice. Right that should cover everything concerning my person. Are there any other questions?”

“Yes ma’am!” a red haired student raised her hand and stood up from her seat. “Why weren’t we allowed to pick our partners ourselves for this class?”

Deciding to ignore the student’s almost impertinent tone, Chessie hovered up a clipboard with a flick of her wand. After a second of studying the seating chart, she answered, trying to keep her voice as stoic and unimpressed as possible. “Well Miss England, the reasoning behind me assigning you random partners is very simple. It is supposed to improve your skills in adapting to a new partner and your social skills in general.” 

Well, that was part of the reason at least. Chessie knew that if Students were granted free rein over their seating order, they’d inevitably end up sitting right near their friends and doing anything but focus on the lesson. 

At any rate, Hannah didn’t seem placated by her teacher’s answer. “Ma’am with all due respect, but I can’t work together with O’Neill. I have Standards to uphold.”

“Oh, wow, very classy of you.” her red haired seat neighbour said, leaning back in her chair and giving her a sidelong glance. “And here I was thinking you were actually warming up to me.”

“Enough you two. Miss England, I appreciate you wanting to “uphold your standards”, but I won’t have you trash talking another one of your classmates like that. If you think she’s not up to your level, why don’t you try to help her along then?”

“B-But-”

“No buts. Sit back down.”

Hannah sat back down with a huff, much to the amusement of Amanda. Although Chessie was more than a bit annoyed at getting lip like that during her first lesson, she thought that this was an adequate display of authority. In her mind it was better for them to think of her as a hardass rather than someone they can walk all over.

“Okay, if there are no further questions let’s begin with some basic theory. I’ll leave it up to your discretion whether you want to take notes, but I’d strongly advise you do. Now, who here can tell me what the difference between summoning and conjuration is?”

Nearly all of her class tried their best to look uninterested and avoid eye contact. All except for a blonde student that struck Chessie as looking familiar. Another look at the clipboard revealed that she had bumped into her the day before. “Yes, Miss Cavendish.”

“Conjuration consists of transforming raw magical energy to create an object that hasn’t existed in physical form before, whereas Summoning is the transportation of an already existing physical object or living being by way of magic.”

“Very good, Miss Cavendish. Almost a textbook answer. Now, working from that definition, what do you think is easier, conjuration or summoning?”

“Conjuration, ma’am” Hannah said, raising her hand simultaneously.

“Okay, explain your reasoning behind that, Miss England.”

Hannah looked extremely smug as she recited the textbook answer that Chessie had been expecting. “Summoning, takes a precise knowledge of the target’s current location, it’s distance and or plane of existence.”

“While that is technically correct, Miss England, there is one thing all textbooks neglect to mention. Conjuration requires just as much forethought and knowledge about what you want to create as summoning does. Summoning in itself is more or less just a more advanced form of conjuration in a way.”

Smiling inwardly as she saw the rebellious student’s gaze soured a bit as she unholstered her wand from her belt and began charging it with a pulse of magic. “Conjuration is the foundation for all summoning techniques, and thus we will devote the first couple of lessons making sure everyone here has the basics down. By the end of the semester, you should effortlessly be able to do stuff like this!”

A green flash beamed out from the tip of her wand, which got echoed by a faint glow from underneath the desks her students were sitting at. Suddenly, out of nowhere, plant stalks adorned with all manner of colorful leaves and flower buds shot out and entered full bloom not even a second later, transforming the dusty old classroom into a sprawling garden of radiant colors and unearthly smells.

She enjoyed the awed gazes of her students darting around the room, not knowing what to focus on, as the plants started winding around chair legs, crawling up walls and windows, covering the floor and ceiling from wall to wall until the entire room was cocooned.

Standing smugly in the middle of the microcosmos she had just created seemingly out of thin air she addressed her students. “Can anyone here tell what I just did?”

Again, Diana’s hand shot up. “You prepared rune circles underneath our desks to serve as anchor points for your conjuration.”

“Very good, Miss Cavendish.” Chessie tried not to look too impressed. “Rune circles are the first and most important step to learning conjuration. They’re a tool for focussing your magical energy and anchoring the conjuration in our plane of reality. They are not strictly necessary, however.”

She flicked her wand again, and suddenly a full bouquet of flowers manifested in her left hand. “Witches adept at conjuring, can manifest most objects without the help of a rune circle. This is the level to which I hope to advance this class by the end of the year.”

She tossed the bouquet into the air and it dissolved, along with the rest of the plant matter in the room, with a blinding flash of green. “Right, I don’t want to bore you guys with gray theory for too long, but there is one more thing we need to talk about before we start getting hands-on.”

She turned around and started writing on the blackboard underneath her name. She had to strain to make the characters legible. When she was done, she turned back to her students, annunciating what she had just put down. “The three safety rules of conjuring. Has anyone here ever heard of them?”

Another moment of meaningful silence passed, with Diana being the only one to raise her hand yet again. “Anyone other than Miss Cavendish? I know for a fact that you at least must have heard about them in Magical Law.” She took another look at the clipboard that was still hovering by her side.

“How about you, Miss O’Neill?”

Amanda, who up to this point had been peacefully dozing off in her front-row seat, nearly fell backwards out of her chair at the mention of her name. “Wha- uh, oh-” she quickly shook herself awake as she realized the entire class was looking at her, including her new teacher. “Could,” she started, sheepishly scratching the back of her head while suppressing a yawn, “Could you repeat the question, Ma’am?”

“The three safety rules of conjuring, O’Neill. Name them for the class please.”

Amanda closed her eyes, obviously trying to dredge up the answers from the depths of her memory. And just as Chessie was about to call on Diana to resolve the question, her eye shot open and she answered with a triumphant grin. “Always know exactly what you want to conjure up. Know beforehand how much energy it is going to take to conjure and dispel something and never conjure up anything that you won’t be able to dispel on your own.”

“Correct, Miss O’Neill. I’d appreciate it if you could answer me without me having to wake you from your mid day nap.”

“Alright Ma’am, I’ll try to answer you in my sleep next time!”

That comment drew a wave of snickers from the class, and even Chessie had to admit that that one was good. Deciding to let it slide for now, she went on, “If you can do that, I’ll be sure to give you straight A’s for the entire semester. But back to business now. The three safety rules are pretty self explanatory, but still, many witches have trouble understanding them fully. But they weren’t just put in place for fun or because some ancient witch had some space to fill in a tome, they were writing. No, much like every warning sign has its story, these rules are the results of centuries of trial and error. Many a witch has ignored them to their peril, so make sure to memorize them. I can already tell you that these are gonna be in the first test we will be writing.”

She looked on approvingly as almost all over the students hunched over their desks to take notes. All apart from O’Neill, who was busy falling asleep again, and England, who had her seat neighbour fixed with a nondescript glare that could have meant anything. Chessie didn’t mind that, after all, she had given them the liberty not to take notes. If they were that confident in their knowledge, let them prove it. 

To her, Amanda and Hannah were polar opposites of a spectrum. Hannah, always trying to be a model student, most likely trying to impress someone, and Amanda being naturally talented in some subjects and simply accepting that she wouldn’t do well in others. She was definitely looking forward to seeing their first test results.

“Right, now that you’ve got a basic idea of what’s what with this course, please open up your textbooks, pages 31 through 33. Read and take notes. You’ve got 15 minutes.”

She felt the pain on some of the student’s faces as she announced independent studying. She had always hated this type of learning, but right now she needed some breathing room. While her students were busy with their assigned reading, she went through the rows of desks and placed papers with little rune circles drawn on them in front of every student.

When the fifteen minutes were up and those who had chosen to take notes were finishing theirs, Chessie called the class to attention. 

“Alright guys, time’s up. I know you’re all antsy to get to conjuring and I’ve got some good news for you. For the last thing we’ll be doing today, we’ll start with a little test to determine your baseline ability. I have prepared some simple rune circles for you and your task will be to use them to summon a single rose.”

A brown haired student raised her hand, “What’s with all the flowers, Ma’am?”

Taking a peek at her clipboard, Chessie gave her an answer. “Flowers are something that everyone should have seen at least once in their life and they’re probably the most inoffensive thing to have around. If you want, I can have you conjure up magic super tarantulas if that is more to your liking, Miss Kagari.”

Akko gulped, not sure if the new teacher was joking or not. “No, no, I think roses would be lovely.”

“Well if that matter is settled why don’t you give it a try, Miss Kagari? Don’t worry, I’ll guide you through it.”

Akko nodded with a determined, but still nervous smile. 

“First step, take your wand and charge it with magic energy.”

Akko complied, her face marked with obvious effort as she complied. Once the tip of the wand was glowing green with energy, Chessie continued. “Now, picture a rose. Make it as clear as possible. Focus on all the little details, from color to smell and take care that nothing else bleeds into this picture. Treat the rose as an object with no memories or emotions attached. Once you think you have a clear picture, direct your energy towards the rune circle and keep it there until it has fully manifested.”

Again, Akko nodded and followed her teacher’s instructions. After several seconds of concentrated silence, Akko let the energy from her wand flow into the rune circle. It was taking her a lot of effort to keep the flow of magic constant, but she managed to keep it going. After a second, an outline emerged that quickly defined itself and in a flash the bright green contours were replaced by red petals and a thorny stalk. She’d done it.

Chessie saw Diana whisper something to her neighbour, which in turn caused the brunette witch to giggle and blush. “Ah so that’s what’s going on between those two.” Chessie concluded, giving Akko an approving nod.

“Very good Miss Kagari. Now, I will be calling each of you in turn. Just repeat what Miss Kagari did. Again, I will be here to guide you through it.”

_________________________________________________________________________

“Very good, Miss Parker.” Chessie said, eying what the black haired witch had just conjured into reality. “A bit lopsided, but that seems to be more down to your mental image than any flaws in technique. Now, Miss O’Neill, if you would please.”

“Right away, ma’am.”

Chessie was right in assuming that Amanda was a hands-on learner, judging by how much enthusiasm the red-haired witch suddenly showed. “One Rose comin’ right up!”

Repeating the steps she’d seen all her classmates perform, she effortlessly brought a near perfect rose into existence, seemingly with no effort at all.

“Impressive O’Neill. I like your enthusiasm. Now, for the last person; Miss England, would you do us the honor, please?”

“Right away, Ma’am.” Hannah’s self-assured smile seemed to waver a little as she was gathering up her mental image of what a rose would be. It turned into a full on concerned frown, as the energy flowing from her wand started interacting with the rune circle. Chessie already had her wand at the ready with a nullification spell in case this got out of hand, but she chose to wait it out and see how Hannah would handle this situation.

The silhouette of the rose that was forming on Hannah’s desk kept wavering, as if refusing to properly gestate itself. Hannah’s reaction was to pump more energy into it, hoping it would force the flower to stay in this dimension. 

But she overdid it. The second the rose came into existence, it turned into a black, awful smelling sludge that fell onto the desk with a wet slap. The red-haired witch turned beet-red as she heard some of her classmates snicker. 

Much to Chessie’s surprise, though, Amanda wasn’t among those who were laughing. Rather, she had her neighbour fixed with a concerned look in her eyes.  
“Looks like you let some negative emotions bleed into the spell. You’ve got to be more careful with that. It can cause real mayhem if it happens during bigger conjurations.”

Just as the last words were leaving Chessie’s lips, the school bell sounded. All of a sudden the classroom seemed much more lively than during her lecture as chairs slid back and students began to hastily pack up their materials in an effort to make as much of their break as possible.

Chessie was a bit irritated that no one was waiting for her to dismiss the class, but on the other hand, she didn’t want to be that teacher. She simply resolved to watch the students filter out and hang around in case someone had a question for her.

She saw Amanda say something to Hannah, but couldn’t make out what over the din of students hastily vacating the classroom. Whatever it was, Hannah simply got up, grabbed her bag and stormed off, leaving her partner standing there with a dumbfounded expression.

Her gaze met with Chessie’s, who simply responded with an apologetic shrug. Amanda sighed, packed up her things and left the room. 

And suddenly it was quiet. The only thing that could be heard in the dusty old classroom was Chessie’s own breathing and the sound of her heart beating in her chest. She’d done it. 

Allowing herself a sigh of relief, she went about clearing the blackboard, letting the lesson pass by in her head once again. The class in and around itself showed potential, but there were some students in more need of assistance than others. 

Hannah had surprised her especially. Judging by her reaction, she wasn’t used to failing at anything magic related, so this must have been a sting at her pride. Her suspicions about Amanda had turned out to be correct. The American witch really did have a knack for this type of magic. Hopefully she’ll be able to pass some of that talent on to her neighbour.

Having cleaned the blackboard, she finally allowed her left arm to slump down to her side. Even though she was practiced at using magic to manipulate it, it was still hard work maintaining such a high dexterity spell for such a long period.

She turned and let her gaze wander across the empty desks. She took in the lingering sulfuric smell of magic mixed with chalk dust, and with a smile on her face said to herself 

“I think I might be enjoying this after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one despite me being in exam crunch time!  
> Only got my AP1 Practical ahead of me now, but no worries I got this
> 
> Looks like Chessie is really getting into the swing of things. How will her future lessons go? Will Hannah be able to keep up with the rest?   
> Stay tuned and find out, cause the next chapter is already in the making.
> 
> Feedback is always very much appreciated!
> 
> Thank you very much for reading
> 
> -Jordan


	4. Day 3: Just getting Started

“God help me, this one was even worse than the last.” Chessie wheezed, wiping cold sweat from her brow with her good arm. 

“So you’d describe the feeling as more intense than it was yesterday?” Lilliane said, scribbling something into her notebook with a concentrated expression on her face. “Can you still feel an irritation in your arm?”

“Well, the pain was worse, that’s for sure. Now I just think I feel the afterglow, but it’s more pronounced than yesterday. Also, the nausea didn’t really subside after the treatment yesterday. Is that normal?”

“Hmm?” Lilliane finally looked up from her notes to regard her friend with a raised eyebrow. “Well, nausea is an expected side effect, but I haven’t heard of it lasting more than two hours after treatment. This might just be down to the sheer number of nerves we are trying to repair here, though.”

“What about migraines?” Chessie asked while rubbing the back of her head for emphasis. “Are you gonna tell me those are to be expected as well?”

“Yes I am, now hold still.” The doctor said, stepping closer to wrap up her patient’s arm. Something about the way she said that made Chessie slightly uneasy. Her look didn’t instill much confidence either.

“Lil?”

Lilliane did her best to avoid eye contact and focus on dressing her friend’s arm. “Yes?”

“Is everything alright? You seem out of it.”

Chessie wasn’t sure if she imagined it, but she could have sworn that the doctor just released a breath she was holding. “Yeah, no worries, this spell just takes a lot of energy. Give me a couple minutes and I’ll be fine.”

“Well, it sure feels like it does.” Chessie said, putting on a weak smile. “This better be worth it, Lil.”

Even though Lilliane knew for a fact that Chessie was trying to crack a joke she couldn’t help but feel uneasy in her answer. “Trust me, it will.” she said, the words tasting bitter in her mouth as she spoke them, “I know it will.”

“You don’t sound very convinced.”

Lilliane froze, eyes widening in shock. “Well, I’m just worried about you is all. I know this has to hurt a lot and all, and I just want to make sure that you...” Her voice trailed off as her gaze met Chessie’s.

That one gray eye the young witch had left still had that shimmer in it. That fire of ambition that nearly became her downfall. That very fire that Lilliane had always admired so much.

“...that you?”

“Huh?” Lilliane shook herself, realising that she had been staring.

“Finish your sentence, Lil.” The sound of Chessie’s words catapulted the doctor back ten years when life was easy. Back when she had woken up to Chessie sleeping, buried face first in an old dusty conjuration tome at her desk. Back to when Chessie did things in summoning class that by all means should have been physically impossible.

“Oh!” She finally snapped out of her stupor, “I meant I want to make sure you get better again.”

She couldn’t believe her ears when Chessie started chuckling. “You really haven’t changed,” she began breaking out into full on laughter, “You’re still just as much of an airhead as you were back then.”

“Airhead?” Lilliane asked, blinking in surprise before Chessie’s laugh started spreading to her. “If I’m an airhead, you’re a jackass.”

“You know what that’s fair.” Chessie said, barely having enough air to speak as her laughing had now turned into a full on fit.

The two of them spent a moment laughing heartily together before, finally, after a couple of minutes, Lilliane had enough air in her lungs to speak normally again. “But for real though,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I want to make you better, Chess.”

Her friend, who had fallen backwards onto the sickbed, panted, “I know Lil,” staring at the ceiling with a dumb smile on her face. “And I really appreciate it. Hell, if you say this will give me back my arm, I’ll be able to endure whatever you throw at me.”

Lilliane cringed inwardly. “I hope you mean that.” she said, turning towards her notes and flipping through them in an effort to avoid eye contact. “I’m gonna be honest with you. It’s probably not gonna get less painful as time goes on. On the contrary, with each treatment your nerves will get more and more sensitive and although I am preparing each dosage carefully, it’s still gonna be a very stimulating pulse.”

Chessie sat up on the bed, fixing the doctor with a determined glimmer in her eye. “I can take it, Lil. I trust you.”

This time Chessie definitely saw the doctor swallow hard as the words left her lips, but before she could raise the point, Lilliane was already switching the topic of conversation. 

“Oh, by the way, how did your first lesson go yesterday?” she asked, beginning to dress Chessie’s arm.

Chessie contemplated pressing the point for a moment before deciding that her sleep deprived and already very agitated nerves weren’t up to the task. Pulling something out of Lilliane’s nose that she obviously wasn’t going to divulge of her own accord wasn’t exactly something that she wanted to get into at 5:30 in the morning.

“Well, I think it went okay. Got to show off for a bit.” She spoke, that cocky smile playing across her lips.

Despite her stomach starting to cramp up, Lilliane mustered a weak smile. “Look at you. Ten years later and you’ve still got it.” She spoke, keeping her eyes firmly on her work, refusing to let them stray up towards Chessie’s line of sight. “Then again, I wouldn’t have expected you to get rusty or anything.”

“To be honest, I was nervous as all hell, but I think I did a pretty decent job of concealing it. I did that little trick. You know the one.”

“Oh!” Lilliane said, “You mean the one that turned the classroom into a sea of flowers, or the one where you summoned a whole swarm of locusts because Shay called you a tramp, or the one where-”

“The flower one, Lil. Jesus, you’re making me sound like a sociopath,” Chessie cut her off, starting to flush red, knowing exactly how many more of her exploits her friend could have listed off. “I hope I left an impression with the kids.”

Despite herself, Lilliane smiled as she worked her way up Chessie’s arm. “I’m sure you did. Hell, that one even had Finnelan impressed back in the day.” As she spoke her mind wandered back to the astonished faces of her classmates and the cocky grin of her teammate as the classroom transformed into an arboreal forest.

“I wish I could have seen it again.” She said dreamily, finishing up the bandages around Chessie’s shoulder.

She hadn’t actually realized that she said those last words out loud until she looked up to see Chessie grinning at her with an incredibly sly look on her face.

“What was that, Lil? I didn’t quite hear you.”

Oh Crap. “No-Nothing! I didn’t say anything!” Lil stammered as she entered full damage control mode. 

“Reeeeeeally now?” Chessie said, her smile widening. “I could have SWORN you just said, ‘I wish I could have seen it again.’”

“NO I DIDN’T!”

Chessie began putting on her shirt again, the smile not leaving her face. “Oh, is that so? Well then, I guess I must have imagined you swooning about my exceptional abilities and-”

“Alright that’s it, here take these pills if you feel like vomiting, NOW GET OUT!”

Chessie savored Lil’s usually pale face turning bright red, as the doctor commanded her out of her office. Even back in the day she had enjoyed teasing Lilliane and she found immense satisfaction in the fact that her former teammate was just as easy to get a rise out of despite her PhD.

“Well alright, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, doctor Ashe.” She said, looking over her shoulder as she left the room. She gave those last few words an extra sweet touch before swiftly moving out and slamming the door shut behind her, lest she fall victim to the rage of the school physician.

Suddenly Lil was alone in her infirmary. Huffing, she turned on her heel and picked up her notebook.

“First treatment seems to have left more side effects than expected. Subject complained about headaches and nausea. Acute nervous system agitation seems to be the root cause. Treatment does not show effect as of yet. Going to have to increase the dosage from now on and hope her nervous system responds mor positively.”She clapped the book shut and sighed deeply. Her eyes traced around the empty infirmary, glancing over rows of vials neatly stored in shelves, books she knew front to back, and old medical charts that were probably older than Finnelan until they came to rest on the sickbed where Chessie had been sitting.

As the conversation with her friend replayed in her head, her face flushed red again with emotions flaring up that she thought she had buried ten years ago.

“Please forgive me when this is all over, Chessie.”

___________________________________________________________________

“Alright everyone listen up.” Chessie was still impressed at how authoritative she sounded in front of the class. “Now that we have covered the basics of creating rune circles, you’ll now get the chance to test your hand at creating your very own.”

She saw some students’ faces light up with obvious excitement, Amanda being chief among them. Her partner’s face however spoke more of moderate indigestion rather than enthusiasm. 

Chessie had been keeping a worried eye on Hannah for the entire duration of the lesson so far, and up to this point the red-haired witch had performed more than satisfactorily. Each time Chessie posed a question for the class, Hannah had been among the few who always raised their hands and who when called always had the right answer.

But now, she could see the redhead’s face tighten in a grimace of ‘I really, really would rather be doing anything but this right now.’ Whatever was getting this little know-it-all to choke up like this, Chessie would have to get to the bottom of it. After all, practical scores made up fifty percent of the final grade.

“Right, we’ll keep it simple to start with. For now, I just want you to draw up a rune circle like the one I handed out to you yesterday. Use the ingredients I have prepared for you at your desks.”

Before some of the smarter students could bring up the point that she in fact hadn’t prepared anything on their desks, a series of green flashes briefly lit up the classroom. 

When the sulfuric smoke that always accompanied magic spells lifted to the background of coughing and blinking students, it revealed an array of magical ingredient jars on each desk.

Chessie had to try very hard to not put on a smug smile and keep her teacher-poker face up. “You can use your notes for reference, and if you have questions, just ask and I’ll be glad to answer them. And don’t forget, no one tries any conjuration without my explicit say-so. You’ve got twenty minutes.”

She found the near synchronous shuffle of the students starting their work very satisfying. She watched as the students began opening the ingredient jars and starting to scratch them into their papers in front of them with tools akin to sharpened chopsticks. The sound brought back so many memories for her.

Having to actively keep herself from starting to drift off into memory, she strode through the rows of desks, inspecting the work her students were doing. Most were doing reasonably well considering the fact that most of them had never created a rune circle before.

She’d gone over the basic theory with them, and she was pleased to see that most of her charge seemed to have taken in her lesson rather well. Of course there were those students who were enthusiastically scribbling away with the wrong tools or the wrong ingredients, or who were just putting down gibberish onto the paper in the vain hope that it would work.

A few well-placed comments from Chessie were enough to get most of them onto the right track. As she passed Akko’s and Diana’s desk she saw that the brunette witch was using the wrong ingredient to create the base of her circle.

Normally, you’d use birch ash that was treated with a specific alchemical potion for the rough shape and use other ingredients such as ground Cockatrice beaks or basilisk scales for the actual runes that would channel the magical energy. 

Just as Chessie was about to step closer and alert her to her mistake, Diana turned towards her partner and whispered something to her. The brunette’s face jumped from surprise over frustration, to adoration and then back to a motivated grimace as she discarded her old attempt and started a new one from scratch, this time with the right base.

With a reassured smile, Chessie continued her rounds through the desks. To her surprise Amanda was already done, having pushed her creation off to the side to use the free space on her desk for a nap. At a glance, Amanda’s rune circle looked passable. While the actual runes looked a bit haphazard, Chessie couldn’t spot any egregious errors that could lead to a spell-misfire.

Still, she couldn’t just let Amanda sleep like this. “Miss O’Neill,” she started, watching in amusement as Amanda shot up with a look of shock on her face. “If you want to sleep in my class, at least produce something that would get an A from me.”

Amanda blinked a couple of times, looking from Chessie to her rune circle that the teacher was waving in front of her face. “So you wouldn’t give this an A?” For a second Chessie wasn’t sure if that remark was meant to be a wisecrack, or if she was being serious.

“No, I wouldn’t.” she said with a sigh, placing the paper back on Amanda’s desk. “You’d be lucky if I gave this a C. Work on it.” 

That was a bluff, but judging by the gusto with which Amanda began revising her work, it hit the mark. Hannah on the other hand was still working on her rune circle with sure, steady strokes. 

She was drafting up a rune circle that from where Chessie was standing looked like it was on par with Diana’s. At this point, Chessie was becoming more and more sure that whatever was dragging Hannah down in the practical part of her lessons, it wasn’t the theoretical foundation.

A few more minutes passed before she called the class to attention again. “Alright everyone, put down your tools. From what I’ve seen, you all seem to more or less have taken my lesson to heart. But before I have you conjuring stuff using your own rune circles, I’d like to recap some fundamental safety rules. Can anyone here tell me what effect a misfired spell can have?”

The usual suspects raised their hands. She called up Hannah, who obligingly recited the textbook answer. “A misfired spell can either release all its energy violently outward, or it might send the magical energy back into the user’s body in a feedback reaction.”

Chessie wanted to commend her student, but got cut off by a voice from the back of the class. “Look at England mouthing off as if she has any handle on conjuration. Damn smartass.”

Hannah’s face froze for a second before sinking into a sad, frustrated grimace. 

Unfortunately for the student, Chessie recognized her voice just by the light French accent alone. “Miss Mercier, how about instead of trying to badmouth your classmates, you instead put your money where your mouth is and tell us what a magical feedback can do to your body?”

The French witch tensed up in her seat. “Uhm, you see a feedback will- Well it will- You know, it’s not good for the body because it will do stuff like-”

“Like this.” Chessie cut her off while raising her left arm. “A magical feedback acts much like a high amperage, high frequency electrical shock. Unlike an electric shock, however, magic will mostly focus on the nervous system alone and cause only minor burns. Still, the resulting nerve damage can be extremely severe. Try to pay more attention next time Miss Mercier.”

“Yes, of course Miss Vaughn.” Chloe looked visibly flushed as she answered.

“Right, now that that’s out of the way,” Chessie said, twirling her wand around her finger casually. “We can get hands on. This time I’ll let you have free rein over what you want to conjure up, but keep in mind that you’ll have to dispel it later. Any volunteers?”

As expected Diana raised her hand. “I would like to go first, ma’am.”

“Go right ahead, Miss Cavendish.”

With a curt nod, Diana drew her wand from her belt and began focussing her energy onto the piece of paper in front of her. A second later, a nice bouquet of flowers materialized in front of her, much to the undisguised amazement of her partner.

Chessie wagered that those were Akko’s favorite flowers by the look on her face. Really smooth, Cavendish. she thought to herself, smirking inwardly. “Very good, as expected. Now dispel them please.”

Diana obliged, and the flowers vanished in a sharp green flash with no big fanfare. The rest of the lesson went down just like the last one did: Chessie called up the students one by one to summon their creations.

This time, however, there were a whole lot more failures and near spell misfires. Most of them were caused due to a combination of imprecise work in creating the rune circle and an unclear picture of what was to be summoned. These two things in and around themselves aren’t that problematic, but put together they could spell disaster.

Thinking ahead, Chessie already had a potent nullification spell ready for all these situations. In the end, most of the students conjured up objects ranging from mundane to bizarre, with only a few of them failing to produce anything.

Unfortunately, Hannah was yet again among those who didn’t get their conjuration to manifest, the spell almost backfiring at her. Chessie could see the frustration on her flushed face as some of her more malignant classmates started snickering at her failed attempt. 

When everyone was through and Amanda had finished justifying herself for summoning what appeared to be a voodoo doll of Finnelan, Chessie began wrapping up the lesson. 

“Now that you all have had your first taste of real conjuration, I think it’s fitting to announce a test for next week. It’ll be a short question sheet followed by exactly what you did just now. I’d suggest all of you go over creating rune circles again and get a good idea of what you would like to conjure up. If any of you want to get some practice in, I’ll be glad to help you.” 

As she spoke she could see her students slowly starting to perk up, some even starting to inconspicuously packing their belongings into their bags in anticipation of the lesson’s end.

Chessie finally released them with a. “Class dismissed.” 

Hannah was among the first to shoot up out of her seat, making for the door. “Miss England, I’d like to have a word with you, please.”

The red-haired witch flinched visibly as her teacher’s words reached her over the din of students leaving for their break. Defeated, she turned around, only stopping when Amanda put a hand on her shoulder and said something to her that Chessie couldn’t make out over the sound of Akko falling, tripping over nothing and landing on her face.

Whatever Amanda had said to her, Hannah’s face softened for a moment before she shook her head and left her partner standing where she was.

“Yes, Miss Vaughn? Is something the matter?” as she spoke the bustle of students was beginning to abate.

Chessie sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her good hand. “I was just about to ask you that question.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.”

“Hannah, allow me to be frank for a second here,” Chessie said with a sigh, fixing her student with a rock hard gaze. “Is there anything troubling you?”

“I’m sorry ma’am I don’t think I understand. What do you mean by that?” The way Hannah looked at her when she said that, told Chessie that she must have hit her mark.

“What I mean is, is there anything on your mind that you can’t keep out of your conjurations? Troubles with classmates, problems with the family? Anything that would cause negative influences to bleed into your mental picture while you’re trying to conjure something up?”

Hannah’s facial expression changed from perplexed to surprised to downright indignation in an instant. “Ma’am, all due respect, but I’m hardly the only student in your class who can’t do a proper conjuration and I don’t get why you’re trying to single me out here. I mean look at Akko, her spell failed today too, why aren’t you having this talk with her right now.”

“Because, Miss England,” Chessie said, trying to take a page out of Finnelan’s book of ‘how to be a hardass teacher’ with the stern look on her face, “I consider you and Miss Kagari to be on completely different levels in terms of skill. Just looking at her, I can tell that she doesn’t have the natural affinity for magic that you do and that’s what’s bugging me about this and that’s why I am having this talk with you right now and not her. Because I know you can do better.”

Hannah’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times, as she tried to come up with a rebuttal that would finally stop Chessie’s meddling. But to her misfortune, the teacher had already tasted blood and would not let the issue go that easily.

When Chessie noticed that Hannah had nothing to object to her with, she went on. “Could it be about that Mercier girl, maybe? Nevermind the mean-spirited comment earlier, I noticed her shooting you nasty looks ever since you first opened your mouth last lesson.”

That seemed to hit a nerve, as Hannah immediately flushed bright red. “No, this has nothing to do with Chloe! I don’t know what her problem is, but she just doesn’t like me. Never has and never will, but that isn’t enough to get me to mess up my concentration!”

While Chessie knew she was onto something with that line of reasoning, Hannah’s feverish denial of her problems having anything to do with her blonde classmate sounded convincing enough to pass as the truth. Although, it probably wasn’t the whole truth.

Chessie mustered her student closely. Hannah looked flushed and irritated to the highest degree. It was obvious that she absolutely didn’t want this conversation to go on any further.

“Alright,” Chessie sighed, “I didn’t mean to meddle in your private affairs. I just don’t want to see a student of your caliber fail.”

Hannah’s face softened a little, although she still looked more than a bit annoyed. “I appreciate the sentiment, ma’am, but I think you’re reading too much into this. Maybe conjuration just isn’t my strong suit.”

“Maybe,” Chessie conceded, “but to be honest, I don’t think that’s the case. Still, I won’t pry any further.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Hannah looked visibly relieved as she turned to leave. The relief however was short-lived, as Chessie called out to her again. “Oh, and one more thing, Miss England.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Should you, despite everything, ever feel the need for some extra one-on-one practice or advise, you know where to find me.”

Chessie couldn’t see Hannah’s face as she answered, but she could fairly clearly pictured the look on her face nonetheless. “Thank you, Miss Vaughn, but I think I’ll pass on that.”

With that, she left the room with more haste than she had probably meant to. And again, Chessie was alone in her classroom. She absentmindedly turned to clean the blackboard of this day’s lesson, her thoughts drifting back to the conversation with Hannah. She wasn’t sure what, if anything, she could take away from it.

Just as she finished wiping away the section about proper placement of runes along the outer diameter of a rune circle, a familiar voice tore her out of her thoughts.

“I didn’t wanna believe it until I saw it myself! Chessie Vaughn in the flesh.”

Chessie spun around, her eyes widening as she saw who was standing before her in the middle of the classroom. 

“Chariot?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think starting from next chapter I'll drop the day by day narrative, otherwise this story would end up with 70 plus chapters at this rate.
> 
> At any rate I finally managed to get this one finished and edited. Hate leaving you all on a cliffhanger like that but the chapter would have gotten far too long if I hadn't cut it there.
> 
> I already have the next chapter laid out (well as far as I can considering I don't really do drafts) and it should be ready... you know what I'm not gonna say it'll be ready soon because I know myself far too well for that.
> 
> Anyway, I digress. Thank you very much for reading!
> 
> Feedback and comments are always appreciated!
> 
> -Jordan


	5. Connections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chessie suddenly finds herself face to face with an old friend of hers who offers her some valuable insights into the student body of Luna Nova

“Ah, I see,” Chariot smiled, leaning back on one of the front row desks in Chessie’s classroom, “so that’s how all of this came to pass. I was wondering why you suddenly decided to become a teacher here.”

“Hey, what is that supposed to mean?” Chessie lamented in mock indignation, flashing a knowing grin at her former classmate over her shoulder as she finished wiping the blackboard clean.

Chariot snickered and adjusted her glasses. “Well, judging by how many times I saw you napping in class, I wouldn’t have guessed that becoming a teacher was high on your list of priorities.”

“Well, you would have been right in that assumption, but it just so happens that finding work as a witch that doesn’t involve you prancing around in skimpy outfits and doing circus grade magic, or playing the tour guide for stupid tourists who want an “authentic witch experience”, is hard.”

No sooner had those last words left her lips, than she realized just what she had just said. Chessie got to watch as Chariot’s facial expression went from surprise to amused disbelief with a small edge of irritation.

“I uhm-” Chessie started, her brain running through damage control options at record speed. Well, record speed for someone who had eaten nothing for more or less a day at this point and had gotten just as much sleep for about twice that amount of time. 

“Let’s get something to eat!” Chessie blurted out, subconsciously aware of her stomach starting to digest itself. “My treat.” She sheepishly added, sighing inwardly as the witch in front of her started laughing.

Chariot lifted her butt from the desk she had been leaning on and spoke with a sly smile. “Gladly. While we’re eating, you can clarify what you define as ‘circus grade magic’.”

Silently resigning herself to her fate and accepting that her attempt at tactfully changing the topic of conversation had failed spectacularly, Chessie made to follow her colleague. 

“Well, alright let’s go then.” 

The two of them made their way through the bustling hallways of the campus in near silence, Chessie still being unsure of how to get herself out of this awkward situation. She briefly wondered whether it would be appropriate to ask about Chariot’s love life as a less awkward alternative to trying to trash talk her magic show.

However, she quickly gave up on that thought when she made out a familiar voice over the din of students in the hallway. 

“Come on now, England. This is a great idea!” Amanda’s voice was as clear and direct as it always was. A quick glance to her right revealed her and Hannah standing in the doorway to another classroom.   
The red-haired witch answered with a blush and a determined expression on her face. “Alright. Let’s meet up there after classes end.” 

Chessie couldn’t hear the rest as she moved past them, but a discreet glance over her shoulder revealed Amanda enthusiastically straightening her posture and putting a hand on Hannah’s shoulder. What seemed weird to her was how Hannah’s face immediately flushed three shades darker and her face tensed up as if she had gotten tasered.

But before she could put any more thought into what she had just seen, Chariot suddenly spoke up again. “So, what exactly did you do after your accident?”

This must have been Chariot’s way of getting back at her. “You mean apart from being in hospital for months? Well, I spent a couple of years stewing in my own misery before trying my luck as an “Authentic Witch Tour Guide.” You know, showing tourists around fairy-circles at night, leading seances, a birthday party here and there. That sort of thing.”

Chessie’s answer seemed to be a bit too frank for Chariot’s taste, as the latter experienced a quick bout of facial derailments that went from surprised to shocked in a heartbeat. “I’m- I didn’t mean to-”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Chessie waved her off casually, “you couldn’t have known that. Let’s call it even.”

Chariot smiled at her, her facial features relaxing. “Alright then.” 

Now it was Chariot’s turn to get herself out of the muck of an awkward situation. Hoping some passing students wouldn’t notice her blush as she spoke, she proved that she was just as inept at that particular task as Chessie was. 

“So, I heard Akko and Diana are in your class.”

Cursing inwardly as she missed the last bits of Hannah’s and Amanda’s conversation when they drifted out of earshot, she turned her attention back to Chariot. “Wha- oh, uh, yeah they are. That Cavendish girl really is something. So is her girlfriend, to be honest, but in an entirely different way.”

“Oh, I know what you mean.” Chariot chuckled, silently relieved that Chessie seemingly had her mind too focussed on something else to care about her casually dredging up what appeared to be a decade of her life filled to the brim with depression. “You know, I still find it hard to believe that she’s the one who finally unlocked the Grand Triskelion.”

That got Chessie’s attention right quick. “She WHAT?!” she blurted out, completely blanking out the surprised stares of a gaggle of passing students. “How in all nine hells?-” she went on but trailed off, her brain entering full ‘DOES NOT COMPUTE’ mode.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Chariot asked, genuinely surprised. “I thought, word would have spread to you by now and all.”

“Apparently it didn’t! Nice that not only do I have the saviour of magic in my class but also that she’s near suicidally impulsive in her spare time!”

“Are you referring to the incident with the broom two days ago? Because I told Diana to take it slow with the coaching but Akko always takes it too far and ends up hurting herself and-”

“That’s not the point here, Chariot.” Chessie cut her off, her brain finally having gone through a hard reset. “How in the world did she even do that?” her voice was drenched in sheer incredulity.

Chariot gave her a smile that told her more than any of the words she spoke afterwards. Namely, one that said ‘I haven’t the slightest idea myself.’

“Well, Akko is just a grab bag of surprises like that. She had no prior experience in magic and, yet, through sheer determination, she managed to brute force her way into becoming one of the most important witches of our age.” Chariot said with an almost motherly expression on her face.

“Pump the breaks for a second,” Chessie interrupted, stopping dead in her tracks nearly causing some students to run into her.. “she doesn’t come from a family of witches? Like at all?”

Chariot shook her head. “No, she doesn’t. Everything she’s accomplished, she has had to learn from zero. Thankfully, she’s had some great friends to help her along the way.”

“Damn, that makes what she pulled off in my class all the more impressive. Remember the standard conjuration test that Finnelan had us do?”

“The one where we had to summon a rose?” Chariot answered, putting an index finger to her chin, as her brain brought the memory back from the depths of her mind.

Chessie nodded in response. “Yeah, that one. Her attempt was one of the better ones. I mean as soon as we went to free-form conjuration she nearly had her spell backfire, but considering what you’ve just told me it’s a miracle she even got this far.” As Chessie spoke, a perfect red rose casually manifested in her bandaged hand.

“How in the world did you just do that?” Chariot spoke, a slightly unnerved smile drawn across her face, before shaking off her surprise. “Nevermind that, back to Akko. She’s probably the most hardworking witch we have on campus at the moment.”

“Hmm.” Chessie assented, another thought creeping to the forefront of her mind. “Say,” she began carefully picking out her words. “What can you tell me about Diana’s Teammates?”

The two witches had finally arrived in the cafeteria. The high vaulted room was filled with students enjoying their breaks, chatting amongst themselves in their little cliques and friend groups, or simply enjoying their meals.

Chessie and Chariot both grabbed a lunch tray and helped themselves to a portion of today’s dish of the day, which happened to be a delicious smelling beef stew.

“Hannah and Barbara?” Chariot mused, sitting down at the nearest lunch table with Chessie taking a seat opposite her. “Well, they’re both above-average students, mostly owed to their respective family bloodlines and the fact that they’ve been puppy-dogging after Diana pretty much since day one. Barbara has really been coming out of her shell lately, though. Looks like she found a great friend in Lotte.”

“Lotte?” Chessie mumbled, demonstrating her proficiency in talking with her mouth full, “The unassuming blonde with the glasses? Wouldn’t have thought that those two would get along.”

Chariot tactfully ignored her colleague’s table manners as she answered, “Apparently they bonded over that one series of popular fantasy novels. I forget what it’s called”

“Oh, Nightfall?” Chessie said, barely keeping in a particularly belligerent piece of beef. 

“That’s the one, yeah. Have you read it?”

“Oh yeah, it’s terrible,” she finally swallowed, “I own 203 volumes.”

Not deciding that this was a rabbit hole she was ready to venture into at this time, Chariot went on, “Anyway, the two of them have basically become inseparable as of late.”

“What about Hannah?” Chessie finally took the chance to innocently steer the conversation to where she wanted it to go.

“Well, apart from what we previously discussed?” Chariot mused, taking a spoon of her beef stew. “She’s a whole lot more hot-headed and abrasive than her teammates, but she’s still an exemplary student.”

“Would you say she’s got a habit of getting into fights with other students?” 

Chariot raised an eyebrow. “Why would you ask that?”

“No reason,” Chessie hastily interjected, dropping her spoon down into her meal with a curse, “I just noticed her having some...” she trailed off, trying to fish her spoon out of the beef stew without burning her fingers.

“Some?” Chariot asked, watching Chessie with anticipation.

“Uh- some difficulty getting along with some of her classmates. AHA!” She shouted, as she finally reclaimed her spoon from the savory depths of her lunch.

“As a general rule, I wouldn’t say she does. She can be a piece of work though, but all in all I think she’s really working on her people skills. It’s a shame that things didn’t work out between her and Chloé.”

Chessie shot Chariot a questioning look, dropping her spoon again. “Hold on are you telling me she was dating Mercier?”

Chariot mirrored Chessie’s puzzled expression for a moment, before being replaced by a dawning understanding. “Oh no, please don’t tell me they’re taking this out in your classroom.”

Chessie’s head dropped onto the lunch table with a loud ‘THUD’ that attracted curious looks from the surrounding students. “I mean, at least one of them is. Mercier made a real nasty out of line comment about Hannah today after her conjuration failed and when I asked Hannah about it after class she basically just told me to get out of her face.”

“Well, the only thing surprising about that is that Hannah miscast a conjuration, to be perfectly honest.” Chariot mused, taking another spoonful of lunch, trying to enjoy the flavor over the quickly souring topic of conversation.

“That’s just the thing,” Chessie said, sitting up, absentmindedly reaching into her lunch again to retrieve her spoon for a second time. “Hannah is one of the best students in class, as long as we’re not actually conjuring stuff. Cause that’s where she just falls apart.”

“And you suspect this thing with Chloé might have something to do with it?”

“Well, I couldn’t think of anything else that would cause her to blank out this badly.” Chessie said laconically, cursing inwardly as she realized that she just stuck her bandaged hand into her lunch. ‘That’s gonna leave a stain’ she thought, trying to surreptitiously wipe it dry on her skirt.

Chariot looked at the substitute with a meaningful glance, trying to read into her motives a bit more. She found it odd that Chessie would get so visibly invested in a student whom she had known for only two days. This curiosity was only stoked by the fact that from their time as students, she knew that Chessie hardly seemed to care about anything that didn’t directly concern her. Save for anything to do with summoning and conjuration that is.

Then again, ten years had passed, and Chessie had changed in more ways than her physical appearance. Chariot couldn’t help but want to figure out what had changed, but she knew that asking Chessie outright why she was trying so hard to figure out what was ailing Hannah was a surefire way to get her to clam up.

Chariot spoke up again after taking another spoonful of lunch, intending to steer the conversation where she wanted it to go.

“It’s good to see that you’re really getting into teaching and caring about your students. And well, too, at least from what Akko told me!”

“Hmmmm.” Chessie hummed affirmatively, having somehow devoured half her lunch already, despite the obvious reluctance of her cutlery. 

In Chariot’s mind, her colleague being distracted by her lunch (and probably still also dwelling on poor Hannah), was the perfect opportunity to subtly gain some insight into Chessie’s motives.

“She also told me about how you turned the classroom into a beautiful flower garden. I’ve gotta say, that is really impressive considering your…” she trailed off, noticing Chessie’s gaze snapping up from the dredges of her lunch up to Chariot’s.

“My?” she asked, setting down her spoon. Her voice had a carefully cultivated tone of inquisitive neutrality, and yet there was an edge of something more. Something that, at least to Chariot, said ‘watch your step’.

“Your uhm-” Chariot began and fumbled. Even though she had averted her eyes, she could still feel that one gray eye boring into her skull. She was frantically trying to come up with something that wouldn’t be incredibly insensitive or inappropriate, but her mind was drawing blanks.

“My arm?” Chessie ventured, her face unchanging. 

Now she was faced with the choice of either running away very, very fast and hoping she wouldn’t have to see Chessie again for the rest of the century, or conceding to Chessie’s interjection. 

Seeing how she wasn’t sure she could manage the former, she reluctantly nodded. “Yes, your arm. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

That was as far as she got before Chessie broke out in a fit of laughter that attracted even more confused looks than her head hitting the table a few moments earlier. “You should see your face right now, it perfectly compliments your hair color.”

Chariot blinked, not sure how Chessie’s entire aspect could have possibly changed that quickly. 

“No, seriously though, it’s fine.” Chessie wheezed, having finally calmed down. She mustered her dumbstruck colleague with a smile. “Don’t worry, I’ve heard it all before and I know you didn’t mean to cause offense with that remark.”

“If you say so.” Chariot said, her mind finally catching up. “In that case, may I ask you something?”

“Sure!” It was still baffling to the red-haired witch, how Chessie could stuff her mouth full to the brim and yet still sound perfectly clear. 

More out of curiosity than necessity, Chariot asked, “How well do you live with that arm of yours then?”

Chessie mulled this question over, the spoon in her mouth turning from side to side. “Well, it could be worse, I guess. I mean, I can do most things just fine, I just don’t have the motor control to do things like writing. But most household chores aren’t an obstacle.”

Even though Chessie’s answer was pretty casual, Chariot winced inwardly as she remembered a fact about her former classmate. “But weren’t you left-handed before?”

“Hm? Oh yeah, sure. But eh, I’m a quick learner and my handwriting couldn’t have gotten any worse as it was anyway.” She laughed the question off with what seemed like casual humor.

But something didn’t sit right with Chariot. She looked at Chessie, who was in the process of scraping out the bottom of the bowl for the last drops of stew with a concentrated expression on her face. 

Heaving a sigh, she let the matter go, before she made more of a fool of herself than she already had. Besides, she had already half forgotten where she was going with all of this. But still she found herself wondering even more than before what was going on in her colleague’s head.

Chariot finished her Lunch in relative peace to the tune of Chessie, picking at her teeth with a fork, trying to dislodge a bit of beef. She’d have to make a mental note NOT to go eating with her colleague anymore. At least not anywhere where table manners were a requirement.

Just as Chariot wanted to try her hand at damage control, in an effort to see if she was just as bad at that as she was at subtlety, Chessie sprung up from her seat, nearly catapulting the chair into a student who was sitting on the table behind her.

“Ahhhh, that really hit the spot. Gotta bounce now though, got a lot of prep work to do.” She said, stretching out her limbs.

Chariot blinked. “Uhm, okay?” was the only thing she got out before Chessie was gone. 

“What in the world was all that about?” she mumbled before realizing that Chessie hadn’t paid for her lunch or covered her own tab. 

_________________________________________________________________________

Chessie panted as she rounded yet another corner. She really hated bolting on Chariot like that, she really did, but she had a perfectly valid reason. As soon as she started eating, she could feel a fresh wave of nausea washing over her.

Her stomach had been upset ever since she woke up, not really helping her appetite along. Until she blundered her way into inviting Chariot out for lunch, this sickly feeling in her gut had stifled her appetite and the (admittedly unexpected) stress of having to manage a class hadn’t helped her desire to eat either.

So in a way, not counting the faux pas of calling her former classmate’s performance “circus grade magic”, she really welcomed this impromptu opportunity to finally fill up her stomach. At least until the urge to vomit became so unbearable that it was hard for her to keep upright.  
She’d been doing her best to downplay just how sick she felt by keeping a laser focus on her lunch, a task made infinitely easier by the fact that it was actually really delicious.

“Must be those side effects.” She mumbled, feeling cold sweat starting to bead on her forehead. She began fumbling around her dress pocket for the small tin of pills that Liliane had given to her earlier.

After a couple of agonizing moments her fingers finally found the small plastic container, and after a couple more equally gruelling seconds spent fumbling with the child safety on the lid, three small, white pills tumbled into her bandaged palm.

She stared at the tablets, trying to recall just how many she was supposed to take when another movement of her bowels nearly sent a splash of bile up her throat.

Deciding that the risk of an overdose probably was manageable as compared to voiding her bowels in the hallway, she swallowed all three tablets at once.

Her stomach, though protesting the sudden intake of solid matter, seemed to calm down as soon as the tablets made their way down. Chessie wasn’t sure what kind of pills Liliane had given her there, but she sure was appreciating them.

She finally took a moment to see where her panicked flight had left her. To her enormous surprise, she had gotten to almost the other side of the campus, ending up right outside the student counselor’s office.

Just as that thought mind, the door to just that office swung open and Chessie was hailed by a voice that had all the friendly disposition of a shotgun being racked in a dark room.

“Ah, Miss Vaughn. What a fortuitous opportunity that I run into you now. There was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

For a second, Finnelan’s appearance had her scared stiff. “AH, yes, professor?” She blurted out, straightening her posture, heedless of her upset stomach. “What is it you wanted to talk about?”

The old professor eyed Chessie with the very same gaze she gave students whom she suspected of mischief like breathing too loudly in class. Much to Chessie’s relief, however, she either didn’t notice or commented on her complexion that was looking more gray than white and the sweat still running down her forehead.

“I need you to hand in a detailed summary of this year’s curriculum for your class.” She said matter-of-factly, letting her cold, hard eyes run over Chessie’s almost quivering form.

“A summary?” she asked, trying to muster a polite smile, her brain already lamenting the fact that this would mean a lot of work. 

Finnelan nodded, finally ceasing her scrutiny. “Yes, a summary. I regret not having told you earlier, but as part of your evaluation for potential further employment after this semester, we also need to assess your ability to plan out lessons and how you want to approach teaching our students.”

On one hand, Chessie could see that this was a perfectly reasonable request, and to be fair she had a pretty solid plan in mind, although she hadn’t written it down anywhere yet. On the other, however, there was a pretty good reason she hadn’t written it down yet, that being that she really couldn’t be bothered bringing a year’s worth of magic teaching to paper.

Nevertheless, she nodded dutifully, not daring to even object to Finnelan’s request. “Of course ma’am, I’ll get to it right away.”

The old professor mirrored her nod, though far more curt. Chessie turned, considering the matter over and done with, when Finnelan called out to her again.

“Oh, one more thing, Miss Vaughn.”  
Chessie sprung back to attention. When Finnelan was convinced that she had the blonde’s undivided attention again, she continued. “As a teacher, you can afford a few more liberties with your uniform than, for example, the students can,” she cast her eyes over Chessie’s decidedly short-cut dress, “but that doesn’t mean you should eschew wearing your hat. It is a symbol of your authority as a faculty member and should always be worn with pride while you’re wandering the halls or teaching a class.”

It was now that Chessie noticed two things. One, Finnelan was correct, in that she wasn’t wearing her hat and two, she had no idea where she left it.

Seeing how admitting to misplacing a part of her uniform on her third day on the job would be a really, really bad move on her part, she decided to play it cool. “Ah yes ma’am, of course. I’ll take more care in the future.”

Another curt nod and Finnelan finally disappeared back into her office, allowing Chessie to finally release the breath she had been holding. Seeing the plus side, the brief burst of adrenaline as she came face to face with what very well could have been verbal annihilation, was enough of a distraction for the pills to take effect.

“Well, guess there’s nothing to it then.” she huffed, resigning herself to an evening full of dull paperwork.

_________________________________________________________________________

Chessie’s head hit her desk as she finished the last page of her curriculum report. She let out an exasperated groan as she flexed her right hand. Even though she had adapted to writing right-handed pretty well over the past decade, having to write twenty pages back to back proved to be taxing on her. 

Reaching into her dress pocket for the umpteenth time this evening, she fished out her pack of cigarettes. She studied the worn cardboard pack, emblazoned with a caricature of a court jester and big block letters that read “JOKER’S RED”.

Her heart sank as she opened the pack and saw that she was on her last three smokes. ‘Sheesh, I really should back it off.’ she thought, trying to recount how many she had smoked. Deciding that that thought would only lead to sadness, she pulled out a cigarette and lit it with her wand.

A deep puff of smoke issued from her mouth a second later, adding to the veritable smog hanging underneath the low ceiling of her room. She knew that Finnelan wouldn’t be happy about this if she found out, but in her mind she deserved at least some small reward for all the work she had put in today.

“Let’s see,” she mumbled, leaning back in her chair to look at the ceiling absentmindedly. “I’m finally done with this BS. Still need to work on the questions for next week’s test. I don’t have any classes to teach tomorrow, so I can use that time to get more practical prep work done.”

As she was rattling off her to-do list, she took intermittent puffs from her cigarette, savoring the biting sensation in her lungs. She sat like that for a while, going over the minute details of her day, especially the talk with Chariot.

Barring her near-bowel catastrophe, there was something else about that conversation that bothered her. Normally, people referencing her disability didn’t bother her overmuch. After all, she’s had to live with it for ten years.

But something about the way she said it, something about the way she looked at her and how she seemed to almost accidentally reference her arm. It stung. In her mind, it looked as though Chariot was pitying her. 

Chessie’s gut tightened with another bout of nausea at the thought. She didn’t want pity. She didn’t want people to see her as helpless. Hell, she had worked so hard to NOT be helpless after her accident. Granted, keeping up a constant levitation spell on her arm was taxing even after years of habit, but she could mostly use it like she could her right arm.

But still why did Chariot’s remark regarding her arm hurt so much, when she had shrugged off so many other people’s comments with ease? Was it because they had known each other? Because Chariot knew her before her accident?

While these and more questions drifted through her mind, her cigarette burned down towards the filter and her bandaged fingers. She just stared at it, her mind clouded with self doubt as much as her room was clouded with cigarette smoke.

She watched the embers slowly eat at the white bandages with an orange glow. She didn’t feel it. She knew she wouldn’t. Righting herself in her chair, she twirled the still glowing cigarette stub in her hand and squashed by closing her fist.

When she opened it again, a black burn mark had neatly burrowed through her bandages, leaving a burn on the skin of her palm. 

“Enough of this,” she admonished herself, flinging the butt from her hand and the thoughts about the lunch she had with Chariot from her mind. “If I start going apeshit now, Finnelan will never let me hear the end of it.”

As she invoked the name of the venerable professor, another thought sprung to her mind. She wanted something else, didn’t she? Chessie racked her brain, trying to recall the brief yet tense talk she’d had with the student counselor outside her office.

There was something else Finnelan had talked to her about, but she couldn’t think of what it was. She paced about in her room, sidestepping various books and research papers scattered all over the floor. 

“C’mon there was something. Something really obvious.” she mumbled, scratching the back of her head. Then suddenly, as if she was struck by lightning she remembered.

“MY HAT!” she yelled, frantically looking around her room in a shock. After she couldn’t find it between the discarded research materials and disorganized clumps of dirty laundry, her mind raced through all the possibilities as to where she could have left it.

“Infirmary first, Classroom next. Couldn’t have left it anywhere else.” She panted as she sprinted out of her room and down the stairs towards the infirmary.

_________________________________________________________________________

“Come on, one more time,” Amanda encouraged Hannah with a smile. “That last attempt was almost passable!”

“Only almost though.” Hannah frowned, hanging her head in shame. Three hours had passed since they snuck into the empty classroom and started secretly practicing conjuration.

Wiping the sweat from her forehead, Hannah tried to recount how she had ended up in this situation, but to her shame, she had to admit that she bore more fault in this than just agreeing to it.

It all started after her talk with Miss Vaughn this afternoon. Amanda had been waiting for her outside the classroom, ready to drill her partner with many questions concerning her talk with the teacher. Uncharacteristically for the American witch, however, was how genuine the concern in her voice was when she asked Hannah if she was alright.

She wasn’t of course. She knew that, and everyone who spent more than five minutes in her presence could tell as well. But Amanda was the only one of her friends to be forward enough to actually ask her outright about it.

Hannah admired her friend for that, even though she could never tell her that. The way Amanda wore her heart on her sleeve, always speaking her mind and always being there for her friends in her very own way. 

But no matter how much she wanted to confide in Amanda, she didn’t dare. She couldn’t possibly unload all of her troubles onto her friend. Not yet, anyway. Not until she figured out just why she got so flustered every time she was near her conjuration partner.

At any rate, noticing how much Hannah was struggling, Amanda got it in her head to ´try to help her friend`. The actual idea of sneaking into the classroom after hours and doing some practice runs came from Hannah, even though she had only been half serious about it. 

“Hey, England, no spacing out!” Amanda admonished her with her usual boyish candour. 

Hannah fixed her with a death-glare, pissed at getting her train of thought derailed like that. “Would you shut it for a second? I’m trying to focus here. I’ll get right back to it.” She made a point of sounding as abrasive as possible.

As expected, her razor sharp words just bounced off of Amanda who shrugged at her with a sly grin. “Whenever you’re ready, princess.”

This was another thing about Amanda that irritated her to no end. She could be as actively caustic and hostile towards the American, but she’d simply shrug it off as if she didn’t care. Not even noticing the blush forming on her face, she took a deep breath.

“Alright, here goes nothing.” She said, charging another spell and aiming her wand on the rune circle she had drawn up on the floor with the ingredients Amanda had sequestered away from today’s lesson. 

This was it, she could feel it. This one wouldn’t end up in a puddle of awful like her countless other failed attempts. Even though her head was aching under the strain of constant and repeated magical exertion, she once more focussed her very being into the spell.

She visualised a rose. As beautiful, red and fragrant as any she’d ever seen. She let the image coalesce in her mind, slowly letting it flow together with her magic.

She saw a green blob of raw magic rise from the middle of the rune circle. It slowly molded and took shape under her influence, but it refused to materialise. Just as all her other attempts had.

“Come on, you can do this!” Amanda cheered, perched on the front row desk. “Keep your focus up and slowly increase the magic flow.”

The magic orb wavered slightly as Amanda’s voice momentarily broke Hannah’s concentration, before stabilizing again. She did as Amanda said, even though every instinct in her body was telling her not to. She knew adding more magic to an already unstable spell could end badly, but then again something overrode her instincts. Something coming from her heart that screamed, as loudly as it could, ‘TRUST HER!’

The green orb grew slightly, its glow intensifying steadily. It briefly flickers into the outline of a rose before plopping back into its original round form for two or three times. Hannah added more magic. Again, the rose refused to materialise. 

“Hey uhm, maybe you should-” Amanda started, watching the raw mass of energy grow beyond the boundaries of the rune circle. 

“I’m not stopping.” Hannah cut her off through gritted teeth as she put one last push of magic into the spell. Then, suddenly, a feeling overcame her. A feeling not too dissimilar from the one you get when you’re leaning back a bit too far in your chair and the world seems to stop for a second.

This was that moment for her. She had leaned back too far. In the space of a second she realized that she couldn’t control the spell anymore or even arrest the self-perpetuating growth of the magical energy ball that was about to violently disperse.

She was just about to scream to Amanda to get down and out of the way when suddenly, the green light filling the room was replaced by the warm orange rays of the setting sun as the orb just disappeared.

Amanda looked from the rune circle to her partner and then back to the circle. “What did you just do?” She asked, an edge of befuddled amazement in her voice.

“I have no idea.” she whispered, her mind not having caught up with what had just happened before her.

After a second or two of further staring at the rune circle, Amanda finally untensed. “Well, no use thinking about it. I think it’s about high time we get out of here. I’m getting really hun- OH SHIT!”

Hannah, who was standing with her back to the door, couldn’t see what had caused her friend to cut to a curse in the middle of her sentence. But she had a pretty good idea.

Turning her eyes away from a rapidly paling Amanda, she hesitantly turned around. What she saw nearly made her curse in shock as well.

Standing there in the doorway, wand at the ready, was their conjuration teacher. Chessie’s one intact eye had the two of them fixed with an expression that could best be described as stupefied rage as she stepped into the room.

“Just what do you two think you’re doing?” she asked, an ice cold calm masking what was undoubtedly a raging wildfire of emotions in her voice.

“Ah, M-Miss Vaughn,” Amanda stuttered, instinctively backing off a step for each that her teacher was taking towards her. “W-we saw that the room was open, and we thought that-”

“I asked you what the hell you two were doing here?!” Chessie snapped, her voice erupting like a volcano. “Do you have any idea what was about to happen, O’Neill?! Had I not been here the two of you could have died!”

Hannah couldn’t remember ever seeing Amanda this terrified. Chessie had her backed up against the teacher’s desk, even though she was a head shorter than her student. “You two are out here, purposefully breaking the rules! Hell, if you’d done literally anything else, I wouldn’t even care, but this,” she gestured towards the rune circle. “This goes too far. I should have you expelled for this O’Neill.”

That got Hannah’s attention. Without thinking, she stepped between her furious teacher and her friend. “Miss Vaughn, please,” she blurted out, surprising both Chessie and Amanda, “listen to me. This wasn’t her idea. This was all my fault, and I just dragged her into it. Please, if you want to punish anyone, punish me.”

Silence fell. All that could be heard was Chessie’s laboured breathing. She took three or four more breaths before she had finally calmed enough to speak normally without screaming. “O’Neill.”

“Y-yes ma’am?”

“I want you to work out an essay on how rune circles anchor magic energies to this plane of existence. No less than two thousand words. You have until Friday. Knock out an A and no one will hear about this. Understood?”

Amanda, still in shock, nodded. “Yes, ma’am!”

“Then get the hell out. You’ve got work to do.”

Amanda nodded again, shooting her friend an apologetic look before rocketing out of the room.

Suddenly, Hannah felt as if someone had just dumped her into a tank full of hungry sharks. She felt Chessie’s grey eye boring into the side of her skull.

“Hannah,” she spoke, all the anger gone from her voice. If anything, she sounded disappointed. “I was ready to accept you not wanting any help, but then you go ahead and do something like this. Why?”

“I-” Hannah swallowed. “I couldn’t bear to fail ma’am. I have a lot going on in my life right now, and I can’t have this adding to my sorrows. So I hatched this plan and talked Amanda into tutoring me.”

Chessie mustered her, trying to spot any errand facial quirk that might betray any dis-ingenuity. She finally broke her gaze, pinching the bridge of her nose. “And why did you reject my offer for help when you yourself knew that you needed it?”

“Because,” she answered, not even taking a second to blurt out an answer that her head had surprisingly little say in formulating, “I felt that I could trust Amanda more. We’ve known each other for a while now and while we’ve not always gotten along I respect her abilities as a witch.”

“So you didn’t trust me?” Chessie chuckled. “Shoulda figured. Well, I guess that’s fair.”

She turned and kneeled to look over the rune circle that Hannah had constructed. “But still what you did here is a serious transgression, no matter how pure or justified your motives were.”

Hannah swallowed down a lump in her throat, as her teacher silently let her bandaged hand glide over the outer edge of the rune circle. 

“Alright, here’s what we’re gonna do.” Chessie huffed, getting back up. “Since I can tell now that there’s a real risk of you doing something stupid if we don’t take care of this problem, I’m going to have to take care of this myself. Starting tomorrow, we’ll meet right here after classes end and you’ll have all the time and resources to practice to your heart’s content. Should you not want to do that, however, I can always arrange a meeting with professor Finnelan so you can make your case to her.”

As she spoke, she casually sauntered over to the teacher’s desk and picked up her hat. She swiftly brushed off a thin layer of chalk dust before placing it on her head.

“I-,” Hannah choked, not knowing what to think. She wanted to object, but she knew that would mean serious censure. Besides, Miss Vaughn had had every opportunity to tear into her just now, and yet she extended her hand in help a second time. “I understand, ma’am. I’ll be here.”

“You better be.” Chessie said, allowing herself a mirthless smile. “Now get out of here. Curfew is gonna start soon.”

As soon as Hannah had darted from the room, Chessie deflated. She found emotions to be something straining and this bout of blind rage followed by intense disappointment had taken a lot out of her. And yet she couldn’t help but smile wryly as she took one last look at Hannah’s rune circle before preparing to magically erase it.

“Oh, you just made a lot more work for yourself, Vaughn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew finally got done with this one.
> 
> I had a good groove going for a large part of this chapter and I'm actually really proud of most of it.
> 
> Next chapter is already in the works so stay tuned for more!
> 
> Feedback and comments are very much appreciated!
> 
> Thank you for your continued interest
> 
> -Jordan


	6. Friends and Enemies

It was a quiet night in the dorms of Luna Nova Academy. The halls outside of the blue team’s room were silent enough to hear a pin drop, and the halls had been deserted since the sounding of the curfew bell.

Even inside the lavishly furnished dorm room it was silent, save for the scratching of Amanda’s pen across the pages and the occasional rustle of Lotte turning a page in the latest Volume of Nightfall. 

“I can’t believe they actually went there with Elizabeth’s plotline.” Barbara whispered, snuggling up closer to Lotte. Lotte simply hummed in affirmative and rested her head on Barbara’s.

Similarly to Barbara and Lotte, Akko and Diana were nestled together on the other end of the L-shaped couch. The brunette was fidgeting with her hair in her girlfriend’s embrace, much to Diana’s dismay. 

“Akko, dear, what’s the matter?” Diana asked, pulling Akko closer. 

The brunette stirred and sat up, pulling away from her girlfriend’s embrace. “Hannah still hasn’t come back. What do you think Miss Vaughn did to her?”

Diana cleared her throat, making an effort to sound as reassuring as possible. “I’m sure Hannah is fine, honey. She probably got an earful from Miss Vaughn and then got sent straight to detention, or to cleaning the Troll’s Bathhouse or something like that.”

“I dunno man,” Amanda butted into their conversation with a sigh “I’ve never seen a teacher fly off the handle like that before. Hell, I was scared that she was gonna jump me and beat me to death.”

Though probably meant more as a joke, her comment drew concerned looks from the other four witches. Reading the room, Amanda decided to qualify her statement. “I mean I already told you, she seemed to have cooled down after Hannah stepped in. At least I didn’t hear her shouting words like ‘suspension’ or ‘Finnelan’ when I left.”

“You’re not helping, O’Neill.” Barbara quipped, the rising conversation spoiling the reading mood enough for her to tear herself away from the book. “Besides you’re the one who got her into this mess!”

Amanda rolled her eyes at the black haired witch, finally putting down her pen. “Oh, will you get off my ass about this already? I already told you that this was her idea! She was the one who asked me to help her with her conjurations!”

Sensing that the tension was about to boil over, Diana stepped in. “Girls please, arguing now isn’t going to help anyone. Let’s just all take a deep breath and calm down. It hasn’t even been half an hour since Amanda came in and I’m sure it won’t be much longer until Hannah comes back as well.”

Barbara still looked ready for an argument but a quick look at Lotte, who was shaking her head with a pleading look in her eyes, got her to sit back down.

Amanda too did her best to heed Diana’s words, turning back to her essay with a huff. 

And so the minutes ticked by, and the same uneasy silence set back in. Amanda’s pen-scratching got more and more sparse as she ran out of steam about three fourths of the way to her two thousand word goal.

Just as she was about to finish a hacked-out paragraph about how birch ash has become the prime conduit for creating the base of rune circles, the door leading to the hallway creaked open hesitantly.

Diana, Akko, Lotte, Barbara and Amanda sat up in unison, as the door opened, and Hannah stepped in. 

“G-good evening everyone.” she said, her voice barely above a whimper. The assembled witches all had to bite back several comments or exclamations, and in the case of Amanda expletives, as they got a good look at their friend.

Her eyes were red and swollen and it was evident that she had been crying, a fact further underlined by her smudged makeup. She was shivering head to toe and her face was as pale as the moonlight filling the hallway behind her. 

“Oh my God,” Amanda yelled, jumping out of her chair and rushing over to Hannah. “What happened to you? Are you alright?” She went on placing a hand on her friend's shoulder. 

“I-” Hannah whimpered, trying very hard not to sob “I'm f-fine. Really.” The weak smile she forced across her lips did nothing to support her sentiment. 

“Are you sure? “ Amanda asked, looking back to her friends for support. “You don't look fine to me.”

Hannah lifted her gaze from the floor towards Amanda. As she looked into those stunning green eyes, any attempt at claiming she was fine went right out the window. The way Amanda looked at her with such genuine, undisguised concern was enough to finally break down the last of her defenses. 

Without another word, she began to sob. 

“Oh crap, oh no.” Amanda muttered hastily, as the situation quickly turned from bad to worse before her. Not knowing any better way to handle the situation in a pinch, she placed her other other hand on Hannah's shoulder and pulled the red-head into a soft hug. 

Hannah burrowed her face in Amanda's chest as her sobbing turned into full on crying. “There, there,” Amanda cooed, softly running her hand through Hannah's hair, “it's alright now. We're here for you Han.”

They stood there like this for several minutes, the other witches in the room looking at the pair with confused concern. When Hannah's tears had abated again, Amanda led her to the couch and sat down with her. 

“What happened?” she asked, her voice turning serious. 

“Did Miss Vaughn do anything to you?” Barabara interjected, finally having recovered from the shock of seeing her childhood friend in such a state.

The red-haired witch shook her head meagerly and whispered. “N-no. She didn't do anything to me.”

“Then what happened?” Akko inquired, getting uncomfortably close as was her habit. 

Hannah averterted her eyes. “I-” she began, sounding unsure, “I ran into Chloé.”

_________________________________________________________________________

Hannah's thoughts were going a mile a minute as she hurried through the hallways towards the dormitories. 'Why did she let me off so easily? What does she want with me?' she thought. 'Guess I'm entitled to at least a little luck every once in a while. And tutoring doesn't sound like such a bad idea either, I hate to admit.' she conceded, deciding that now wasn’t the time to try and dissect her teacher’s motives

She rounded another corner, mindful of the fact that curfew would be sounded in a few minutes. She'd hate to get off lightly for a serious transgression of the school code and then get sent to detention for staying out too long. 

'I hope Amanda won't be too mad that I got her in trouble over this.' her inner voice went on, before suddenly being struck by an idea,' I should offer to help her with that essay! Yes, that's a good way to make up for all the fuss.' 

She couldn't help but smile when she thought about her and Amanda working together on that essay. She did that a lot lately; smiling over Amanda. She didn't know why and when it started she even tried suppressing it. 

But there was just something about the American witch that struck a chord deep down within her. And the fact that she apparently was immune to Hannah's more caustic personality traits was an added bonus. 

Hannah was well aware of the fact that she could be a little difficult at times. Sometimes even when she didn’t want to be. But that didn’t seem to matter in the slightest to Amanda. She just took Hannah as she was, laughing off any snide remarks, or even firing back with jovial insults of her own.

She was in the middle of dreaming up her and Amanda working on that essay together, when her foot suddenly caught on something and she tripped. She barely had time to put her left arm out in front of her before she hit the ground with a dull ‘thud’.

“My my, Hannah,” a familiar voice mocked as she was laying there on the floor, cradling her arm, “you can be so clumsy sometimes. Didn’t you see my foot there?”

“C-Chloé.” Hannah choked getting up to her knees and turning towards her ex-girlfriend, who was casually leaning against the doorframe of the classroom she had just passed. “What did you do that for?”

The French girl put on an innocent act, tapping her index finger on her chin. “What me? I didn’t do anything.” She cooed, her voice overflowing with more fake sweetness than a bag of Halloween candy. 

She stepped closer to Hannah, who was still on her knees and spoke in a sweet tone edged with sheer malevolence. “But, I have to say it’s so in character for you to blame other people for your failings. Hannah, Hannah, Hannah,” she tutted, putting her hand underneath the redhead’s chin and raising Hannah’s head to look at her.

The touch of Chloé’s hand felt as if she was being scorched with a soldering iron. She wanted to resist, to turn her head away in defiance, to spit all the ire and vitriol she could muster at the cocky french girl.

But she couldn’t. Hannah was helpless, paralyzed with a strange mixture of fear and anger. She could do nothing but watch as Chloé continued her monologue. “Always so angry and aloof, always so clumsy, always breaking things.”

“I already told you it was for the best.” Hannah started having finally recovered enough from the initial shock to at least rebut Chloé.

Her ex girlfriend however, just ignored her remark as she continued on. “What we had was special, Hannah.” For a second, something flashed through Chloé’s eyes that genuinely scared Hannah. Something that just looked like pure ill intent manifest.

The blonde, let her last sentence hang before finally letting go of Hannah’s chin and turning around. “But I should have seen it coming. After all this isn’t the first relationship you’ve destroyed.”

Any rebuttal or angry comment Hannah could have spewed out died in her throat as Chloé’s parting remark registered. Out of everything the blonde could have possibly said to her, this one was intended to hurt her. Deeply.

She watched Chloé saunter off in the direction of the dorms, before finally staggering to her feet. She looked around, thankful that the hallways were completely deserted. She could feel her breaths becoming shallow as Chloé’s words played over and over and over in her head. She was beginning to have a panic attack.

Hannah barely managed to get to the bathroom at the foot of the stairs leading up to the dormitories, and lock herself in one of the stalls before she just broke down.

She was hurting bad, and that wasn’t even counting the throbbing coming from her arm. She sat there alone in the dark bathroom and cried, her sobs and wails bouncing off the walls and echoing back to her in a cacophony of sorrow.

Between the wordless cries of despair and agony, she only managed to get out one word. One which she repeated over and over again

“Why?”

_________________________________________________________________________

As Hannah finished talking, a stunned silence fell over the blue team’s dorm room. They all knew Hannah’s breakup with Chloé had been messy but none of them could have imagined it would turn this ugly.

Barbara, Lotte and Akko stared at their friend with horrified expressions drawn across their faces, while Diana mustered her with an unreadable expression that nonetheless spoke of deep worry.

Amanda however took an entirely different approach to addressing the situation. “That little bitch,” she hissed after her brain had finally parsed all the information Hannah had just divulged, “I’m going to- I’m going to-”

“A-Amanda?” Hannah asked hesitantly, still sniffling. 

“I’m going to wring her scrawny little neck for this! This has officially gone too far!”

Certain that Amanda wasn’t joking, Hannah sprang up from the couch. “W-Wait, no!” she blurted out, far louder than she had intended to, “please don’t make a big deal out of this. Please.”

But at this point Amanda was so enraged that she barely even registered Hannah talking. Without another word, she stormed out of the door. Hannah’s brain shifted into overdrive, urging her to follow.

“Wait!” she called one more time, as she nearly fell over the coffee table in front of the couch. She caught herself and sprinted out the door after Amanda, leaving her friends to stew in their confusion. 

She barely managed to catch up to Amanda, who at this point had already reached the stairwell leading down into the lower floors of the dormitories.

“Amanda please, wait!” she pleaded again, grabbing her friend by the wrist. The touch however, to her felt as if she had just stuck her hand into a power outlet. She recoiled, sucking in a surprised gasp. Nevertheless she succeeded in drawing Amanda’s attention.

“I-” Hannah began, her voice shaky and quiet, “I already got you into enough trouble for today. Please don’t do this Amanda. Please.”

“But,” Amanda hissed, angered still bubbling in her voice, “but she can’t treat you like that, it’s not right!”

“I’m telling you it’s fine. I’ll be fine!” Hannah lied, forcing a smile so fake that would have made a mannequin blush. 

Amanda rolled her eyes and turned away to make for the stairs again. “Not this again.” she huffed, taking one more step forward. 

Running out of options fast, Hannah tried one last time to stop her friend from doing something stupiud. Clenching her eyes shut she enveloped Amanda in a tight bear-hug from behind. 

“H-hey! What are you-” Amanda started but found the words catching in her throat as she looked over her shoulder and saw the desperation on Hannah’s tear-streaked face. Her body, previously tight with rage, untensensed. 

She was now, for the first time, becoming aware of just what Hannah was trying to tell her. That girl had endured so much today, and Amanda storming off to beat up another girl in the dead of night on her friend’s behalf probably wouldn’t be an improvement to Hannah’s overall mental state. 

Amanda could feel Hannah’s face pressed into her back as the red-head started to sniffle again. She slowly put her hands down onto Hannah's hands which were crossed in front of her, still holding onto her tightly.

“I-” she started slowly stroking Hannah’s hands. She could feel the red headed witch shivering under her touch. “I’m sorry Hannah. I shouldn’t have-” she started again but trailed off, as her friend slowly loosened her grip.

Amanda turned around, gently taking Hannah’s hands. She looked at her friend and saw a girl that didn’t need revenge no matter the cost. She needed rest. Rest and comfort.

Trying to suppress another sob, Hannah looked straight into Amanda’s eyes. “Please don’t apologize, I know you mean well. But please don’t worry,” she smiled again, though this time more genuinely, “I’ll be fine. After all, I have handled worse.”

The way that Hannah looked at her, sparked something deep within Amanda, that went beyond righteous anger. It was something that started out small, but like a spark into a box of tinders, quickly spread as she realized just what she wanted from Hannah. She wanted to protect her. She wanted to make sure that her friend was safe, that she didn’t need to worry about anyone hurting her anymore. 

This desire was only fueled more and more by the fact that she, as well as all of her other friends knew, just how much Hannah had been suffering lately. Her failing in class and the messy breakup with Chloé were in reality nothing more than symptoms of something far greater.

“Uhm, Amanda?”

Suddenly, the American realized that she had been staring right into her friend’s eyes for far longer than probably appropriate for the situation. “Ah, I-” she stammered, trying to find any topic of conversation that wouldn’t involve telling Hannah just what her brain had just concocted. She was sure that if she did, Hannah would never let her hear the end of it. “I was just thinking about your arm. You said you hit it in the fall. How’s it doing?”

Hannah blinked, not sure what she had expected Amanda to say. Why did she suddenly feel so disappointed? “Oh,” she stammered, slipping her hands out of Amanda’s. Wait why had she still been holding onto them for so long? “It’s just a minor bruise, nothing serious.” As she spoke her smile somehow turned from genuine to nervous again, and she started to sweat.

Her left arm had taken the brunt of her fall and she could still feel it aching every time she moved. She knew that a large, dark blue bruise had formed all along her forearm but she didn’t want Amanda to see it. She didn’t want her to worry.

“Hannah, please don’t lie to me.”

The redhead blinked. “Excuse me?”

Amanda sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose, “You’re a terrible liar as it is and all of this turmoil doesn’t really serve to enhance your acting.” She looked at her friend again with concern. “Can you please stop pretending you’re fine? I know you’re not and that’s okay. It’s okay to be hurting. I’m here for you. WE’RE here for you!” She gestured towards the blue team’s room. 

Hannah took a moment to process that information. The way Amanda’s voice cracked a little when she said that was so comforting. It seemed real and genuine, because that’s what it was. Amanda was suffering with her. “It,” she started but had to compose herself as a sudden rush of emotions came flooding over her again, “it still hurts quite badly. I don’t think it’s sprained, but the bruise looks quite nasty.” as she spoke, she averted her eyes and began cradling the appendage involuntarily again.

Amanda quietly took in this new information before suddenly hitting her fist into her open palm with a determined expression on her face. “Then we’ll have to go see Doc Ashe tomorrow before classes start.”

“Wait what do you mean ‘we’?” Hannah asked, getting flustered.

Even though Amanda blushed slightly, the determination didn’t leave her voice. “Well I’m coming too of course. I don’t want her to catch you alone again.” 

“So your solution is to accompany me everywhere from now on?” Hannah asked, bemusement entering her voice. She had to admit she wasn’t averse to the idea. 

“Well yes! I mean no, I mean-” Amanda stammered, taken aback by Hannah’s sudden return to their usual teasing. “God, let’s just talk this through tomorrow. I’m getting really tired and you must be exhausted too.”

Thankfully for Amanda, Hannah nodded in agreement. “Yeah, this day has been,” she paused, trying to find the right words, “taxing.” She wiped away the wet streaks still running down her face. She seemed calmer now, more like her composed self when she spoke up again. “Thank you Amanda.”

“Don’t worry about it, England,” she muttered, still blushing, “Now let’s get you to bed.”

Hannah nodded again, before her face changed to a nervous expression again. Her voice was shaking a bit as she spoke, “Hey by the way, how is your Essay coming along?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one turned out a little shorter than usual, but I felt like this chapter would lose its focus if I kept it longer.  
> But what does it all mean? What did Chloé mean and why is she out for blood like that?  
> There is only one way to find out and that is to stay tuned for the next chapter.
> 
> __________________________
> 
> I actually would like to take a little bit to say thank you to every single one of you who has been  
> leaving nice comments and kudos under each and every chapter. You guys are the reason I have the energy to keep going   
> and to keep sharing my inane drivels with you.
> 
> I'd especially like to thank my beta-reader, Jasper. They've been offering so many valuable insights and criticism I can tell you that without them,  
> this story would barely even be readable. This goes out to you specifically :)
> 
> At any rate, thank you all very very much for reading. As always, I look forward to reading your reactions down in the comments c:  
> Se you all (hopefully) next time!
> 
> -Jordan


	7. Old scars and new Blood

“How are you feeling?” Lilliane chirped happily, putting away her wand.

Chessie, pale-faced and panting heavily from the strain of the procedure, took a second to compose herself before speaking up. “I nearly passed out there,“ she said with a cocky smile drawn across her face, despite the lingering pain in her arm. 

“I saw that,” the doctor mumbled sheepishly. “If the doses are getting too hard for you, you've gotta tell me. I can always lower the dose.”

“No no, I'm fine.” Chessie protested, the color beginning to return to her face. “No need to go easy on me, you know I can take it.”

“If you say so,” Lilliane huffed under her breath before quickly adding “So, general feelings of nausea and the ike aside, how are you?”

Chessie closed her eyes in contemplation. She had expected this treatment to be painful, but compared to this, the previous ones almost seemed pleasant. She probed the space where her left arm should be, hoping that she would maybe feel a little twitch of muscle over the lingering pain. She found nothing. 

Defeated, she shook her head. To her surprise, Liliane didn't look sad or defeated at the lack of progress her treatment method was showing. No, she looked nervous, frightened almost. The white haired doctor's eyes were glued to her notebook, in a desperate effort not to have to look at Chessie as she hastily flipped through the pages. Chessie would have loved to know what her friend was looking for in such a hurry all of a sudden. 

For a split second doubts about all of this began to form in Chessie's mind, but she banished them as quickly as they arose. Lilliane knew what she was doing, Chessie just had to trust that Lilliane wouldn’t hurt her.

“So Lil,” she began, but paused as the doctor almost flung her notebook through the room in surprise. “What's the plan now?” She finished when the doctor had gotten all her limbs and notes in order again. 

Lilliane blinked, her brain not having caught up with what Chessie had just said. “Ah uhm,” she stammered before regaining her balance. “Let's see. Are you still experiencing nausea and migraines?”

Chessie hummed in the affirmative. “Hhhm, though I've gotta say those pills you've given me really do work wonders.”

“Good, good!” Lil sighed with obvious relief. “Just for the record how many have you been taking per dose?”

“Three each time I felt like I was about to throw up.”

Lil bit her lip. 'Alright, maybe it isn't as bad as you think. Stay calm and keep your poker face up.' She thought running through the recommended dose in her head, and noting that Chessie was already three times over the recommended maximum already.

“Okay, and that gets rid of the nausea completely?” Lilliane formulated that more like a hopeful wish than anything else. 

“Well, mostly. I can still feel my stomach buzzing a little after but I can manage.” Chessie put on that cocky smile again. “You know me, I'm tough.”

Lilliane's poker face nearly dropped. With great effort she managed to keep herself from blurting out an expletive, expertly concealing it by clearing her throat. “I see.” The doctor's voice sounded far more unsteady than she would have liked. 

This time Chessie caught wind that something was wrong, but before she could ask Lilliane about it, a hesitant knock from the door derailed her train of thought.

Lilliane, who was as surprised as Chessie to have someone come in at this ungodly time of day, called out “Yes, come in,” almost hesitant, as the person on the other side of door had knocked.

To be fair Chessie didn’t know just who to expect when the door finally creaked open, but she sure as hell wouldn’t have expected both Hannah and Amanda to step into the infirmary.

Similarly, the two young witches were just bewildered by the sight of their teacher sitting on one of the sickbeds, her with her shirt and most of her bandages removed. 

After a moment of awkward silence, Chessie's brain finally kicked into gear and she cleared her throat. “Good morning ladies.” She was surprised at how nonchalant she made that sound. 

“Ah, uhm- Good morning, Miss Vaughn,” Hannah stuttered after her own stupor had passed before quickly adding “Doctor Ashe.”

Amanda simply chose to awkwardly smile and wave at the two in greeting. 

If the white haired doctor was surprised, she didn't let it show. “Ah, good morning you two. What can I do for you?” she asked with all the sweetness you'd expect from a school physician. 

“Well, you see,” Hannah started shakily, before clearing her throat in an effort to banish the unsteadiness from her voice. “Yesterday, I tripped and hit my forearm. It's pretty bruised and I figured I should let you look it over.”

While Hannah spoke, Chessie noticed Amanda's face tighten when her friend mentioned the word trip. Come to think of it, she wouldn't have thought Hannah to be the clumsy type. 

Meanwhile, Lilliane nodded thoughtfully. “I see,” she said her eyes scanning the red-head from head to foot. “Please have a seat on one of the beds, I'll be with you shortly.”

With that she turned to Amanda. “And how can I help you?” she asked with such motherly affection that it even made Chessie feel all warm and fuzzy inside. 

Amanda obviously had her thoughts somewhere else seeing how she started at the question. “”I uhm- I,” she stammend, stalling for time while her brain frantically worked to come up with a satisfactory answer. “A-Aspirin!” she finally stammered, “Yes, Aspirin. I've had these really nasy headaches for a while now and I was wondering if you had some Aspirin for that.”

“Certainly,” Lilliane chirped, “just wait a moment I'll be with you right after I-” her gaze wandered between Hannah and Chessie. The latter, catching on to the situation nodded, reaching for the bandages with her good arm. “Right after I've taken care of your friend here.”

After receiving a nod from Amanda, who got noticeably flushed at the use of the word 'friend', she turned to Hannah. “Right, Miss England could you please roll up your sleeve.”

Hannah complied wordlessly, revealing a large dark blue bruise covering half of the student's forearm. 

'Must have been one hell of a trip.' Chessie thought to herself as she stole over a curious glance at her charge, her fingers moving to bandage up her arm almost on autopilot. As she looked back to the gray, dead flesh hanging off the left side of her body she found herself quietly frustrated that despite all of her practice, she couldn't bandage herself as neatly as Lilliane could. Then again, her friend had the benefit of both her arms. 

“Oh, my. That does look pretty severely.” The doctor said, leaning in close to look over the bruise. “Do you feel like movement in your arm is impaired at all?”

Again, instead of answering Hannah simply shook her head without lifting her eyes from the floor. Odd, how Chessie thought. From what she had seen of the red-head, she was one of the more outspoken pupils in her class. 

Lilliane smiled, “Well that's good then. I'll look it over with a diagnostic spell just to be on the safe side and then I'll apply a soothing spell that should aid the healing process. It’ll take just a moment.”

At last Hannah lifted her gaze. She even managed to muster a weak smile as she said “Thank you, doctor.”

While Lilliane began to work her magic on Hannah’s bruise, Chessie had managed to get about halfway done with wrapping up her left arm. As she said there, working the gauze around her dead limb, she could feel a gaze burning a hole into the side of her head.

She knew Amanda was staring at her with morbid curiosity. Without pausing or looking up she addressed her student. “Enjoying the show, O'Neil?” she spoke, inwardly smiling at the sight of Amanda flinching in her peripheral vision, “This is what could have happened to you.”

“I-” Amanda started, tripping over her own words, “I’m sorry ma’am, I didn’t mean to stare.”

As much pleasure as she took in making people who stared at her uncomfortable and as satisfying as it was to watch the cocky American squirm like that, she decided to let her off the hook. “It's fine, I'm used to it.” she said, pausing to fix Amanda with a stone hard gaze. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Hannah's head slowly start to lift in her direction. 

“I hope you understand, now, why I reacted the way I did when I caught the two of you.” she went on, raising her right hand and put her thumb and index finger together. “The two of you were this close to ending up like this. Trust me when I tell you that all safety rules, without exception, are written in blood.”

Amanda swallowed and nodded. “Understood, ma'am. It won't happen again.”

“It better.” Chessie said, resuming the work on her arm. “Because if it does, you'll be out before you can even spell 'expelled'.“ 

Amanda didn't get a chance to reply before Lilliane cheerily announced. “Alright, that should do it. Come back again in a few days for a follow up. Now, Miss O'Neil,” the white haired doctor spoke as she produced a small orange pill container from the pocket of her lab coat. “Here's something to help your migraines. One at a time will suffice, these are quite strongly dosed.”

Amanda stepped closer and fumbled the pill container into the breast pocket of her blouse while muttering a nervous, “Thanks, doc.” 

“No problem. Now, you two better hurry. Morning classes will start soon.”

The pair first looked at each other and then at the clock over the door. Lilliane and Chessie both had to bite back their laughter as the two students practically rocketed out of the room. 

When the door slammed shut and the two of them could hear the footsteps receding down the hallway, Chessie finally let out a dry chuckle. “Now that was just adorable.”

“Indeed.” Lilliane snickered, as she stepped closer and carefully took the gauze out of Chessie's hand. As their finger brushed against each other, Chessie involuntarily flinched, though she didn't know why. After all there was nothing unpleasant about Lilliane's touch. Quite the opposite in fact. 

Before Chessie could go deeper into that particular train of thought, Lilliane spoke up again with what sounded like admiration in her voice. “I gotta say, you really have this 'strict teacher' routine down. I half expected you to jump out of your skin when those two came in here.”

“Well I almost did.” Chessie confessed with a say before adding. “You know, O'Neill was bullshitting you, right? About the migraines I mean.”

Her friend flashed her a knowing grin. “Oh please, just how stupid do you take me for?”

“Is that a rhetorical question? Hey, OW!” Chessie started but got interrupted when Lilliane pinched her cheek. 

“Of course, I know that she was lying about having a headache, that's why I gave her a pack of tic tacs.”

“Okay okay, I get it ease off,” Chessie laughed as she swatted away her friend's hand. “Couldn't that be considered medical malpractice though?”

“Ever heard of placebo?”

“Lilliane Ashe, you are one sly fox.” Chessie cooed moving her face closer to Lil's. Her gag however backfired when Lilliane looked up to fire a witty reply back at her, only to suddenly be face to face with Chessie. 

The two of them stared at each other for a second, both flushing red. “So-” Lilliane finally broke the awkward silence.

“Yeah.” Chessie responded leaning back again. ‘God damn why are her eyes so pretty?’ Her inner voice lamented. She cleared her throat in an effort to get the conversation going again. “So uhm. Got any plans for today?” As soon as she had spoken those words she realized in what direction she had accidentally steered this conversation.

Lilliane regarde her with a look that was equal parts interested and surprised. “Well apart from tending to any student who comes in today, not really. Why do you ask?”

Chessie was about to wave off with a casual 'Oh no reason in particular.” when a far more proactive part of her sleep deprived brain took over. “Oh well I was wondering if you wanted to grab some lunch with me later.” She wanted to kick herself for saying that, but now that it was out there, she might as well roll with it. 

“I uhm,” Lillianes emerald green eyes went wide as she blushed yet again. “Yeah. Yeah I'd like that.”

“N-Not as a date or anything. I meant just like the good 'ol times, remember?” Chessie tried to clarify but only succeeded in talking herself deeper into the shit. 

“Yes of course.” Lilliane said softly, her hands beginning to wrap up the rest of Chessie's arm with the usual dexterity and swiftness. 

Neither of them said a word after that, Lilliane lost in thoughts that only she could know and Chessie afraid that she might say more stupid things. 

When Lilliane was finished, Chessie pulled her shirt back on and hopped off the bed. “Thanks Lil. I'll be off then.”

Her friend nodded. “Alright, take care then! I'll see you later.” Much to her amusement, Chessie left the room in much the same fashion that Hannah and Amanda had earlier. She couldn't help but smile as her head replayed the conversation the two of them had had. She could have sworn that they'd had almost this exact talk before, ten years ago. 

Her smile however faded when her eyes fell on the worn yellow cover of her notebook. She sat down at her disk and flipped it open to where her notes had last trailed off. She began to write, trying to banish the image of Chessie's smile from her mind. 

“Subject remains unresponsive to treatment. Further complaints about nausea, migraines and radiating pain around affected regions. Subject seems to be building up a tolerance for medication too quickly, might have to switch to stronger stuff.”

She closed the book again and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I've got to tell her.” she muttered, feeling her stomach knot up with guilt again. “I can't keep her in the dark like this.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

Hannah's hand was resting on the door handle of Chessie's classroom. She’d been there for several minutes now. Something deep down inside of her was preventing her hand from moving, no matter how hard she willed it to do so. She knew that Miss Vaughn only wanted to help her, so why did she feel so apprehensive about this?

She gathered all her willpower and with one decisive movement, pulled the handle down and pushed the large, wooden door open. 

The classroom was bathed in the sift orange light of the setting sun, chalk dust in the air outlining the rays. Leaning against her desk and visibly surprised stood Chessie, who hastily crushed out a cigarette in her left hand. 

“Ah, Hannah.” she said, quickly putting on a welcoming smile. “You're early.”

Was she? She could have sworn with all the time she had spent dawdling in front of Chessie's classroom, that she was about ten minutes late. “I guess I must have misjudged the time, sorry ma'am.” she said shakily, wondering whether or not smoking was even allowed on campus. 

“Ah, don't worry about it. I'd rather have you be too early than too late.” Chessie spoke with a warmth that was the complete opposite of the fury she had displayed the day before. “I hope you're ready to earn something.”

Hannah nodded as she stepped through the rows of desks. As she drew closer, she saw that Chessie had prepared a rather large rune circle in front of the teacher’s desk. It looked as neat as you would expect from a teacher. Another thing that she noticed was the lingering, yet still acrid smell of tobacco smoke, causing her to wrinkle her nose and sniff.

When Chessie noticed her student eyeing her work, she couldn’t help but smirk. “I’d give that a B.” she said, hoping Hannah would get her sense of humor.

To her disappointment, apparently she didn’t. Hannah simply looked at her with an expression akin to a toddler realizing they’ve just lost their parents at the mall. 

‘Good job, now you’ve made her even more nervous, Vaughn.’

“Nevermind that, let’s just get started.” she huffed, pulling out her wand and charging a nullification spell. “Now, the task is still the same. I want you to conjure up a rose. Take as much time and attempts as you need and don’t worry. I’m here to help you.”

And she did. Over the course of the next three hours Hannah tried over and over and over again to summon just this one damn rose. And each and every attempt was met with failure.  
Some failed to manifest, others ended up as magical residue on the floor and the rest nearly backfired.

Each time Hannah failed, Chessie would give her pointers and tips but whatever she said, it didn’t seem to be working. As time wore on, Hannah became visibly frustrated, each subsequent failed attempt yielding a different curse.

Hours and hundreds of failed attempts later Hannah looked as if she was getting desperate. She was standing in front of the rune circle with both her hands cramped around her wand. Sweat was running down her forehead, both from the physical strain of repeated spell casting and the emotional pressure she was putting herself under.

The air was rife with the sulfuric smell of magic, mingling with the pungent stench of Hannah’s miscast conjurations. “One more time.” Hannah panted, beginning to funnel magical energy into her wand again.

“Hannah, I think you’ve had enough for today.” Although she was trying her best to sound authoritative and calm, Chessie couldn’t stop concern from bleeding into her voice. “Let’s just call it quits for today and-”

“No!” Hannah interrupted her with a shrieked, clenching her wand so hard her hands were turning white. “No I need to do this! I have to-”

Suddenly the green glow of her wand faded and she sagged down to her knees. Chessie was by her side in an instant. “I told you, you’ve had enough.” She said, propping Hannah up to prevent her from falling over. The student felt fragile and limp in her arms as Chessie gently leaned her against one of the front row desks. 

Hannah, having spent all her energy with her conjuration attempts, had just enough left in her to quietly start sobbing. Chessie on the other hand was beginning to shift from ‘slightly concerned’ to ‘oh shit’. 

With her being not the most stable person herself, mentally speaking, she had absolutely no idea on how to console a person having a breakdown. So, she said the first thing that she thought couldn’t make the situation any worse. “Are you alright?” She blurted out with all the tact of a Piano falling down a flight of stairs.

The student shook her head. “Why can’t I do this?” she sobbed pulling her knees to her chest and burying her face in them. 

“Hell if I know,” Chessie huffed unhelpfully, setting herself down next to Hannah and putting her hand on the sobbing redhead’s shoulder, “Why are you so hell bent on this anyway? Why are you doing this to yourself?”

She hadn’t really expected an answer, asking more for the sake of just saying something. So it came as a surprise when after some time, Hannah’s sobbing was replaced by the wavering tone of her voice.

“I just,” she whimpered slowly sitting up next to her teacher. “I just wanted to prove to myself that I’m not a failure.”

Now that took Chessie by surprise. “What do you mean failure? You’re one of the top students in the class what are you-”

“It’s not enough,” Hannah interrupted, “it’s not enough. I’ve got to get better. I have to.” Her voice sounded strained, as if she was holding back an unfathomable amount of emotions. “I’ve got to prove to them that I’m not a failure, so I can make this all better.”

“Who is ‘them’, exactly?” 

Hannah suddenly tensed up, realizing that she’d given up more information than she had intended to share. She stared straight ahead, for a moment, trying to get her racing thoughts in order. 

“My parents.” she finally said, inwardly admitting defeat. 

“Your parents?” Chessie echoed quizzically, “But shouldn’t they be more than satisfied with your current grades?”

Hannah shook her hand in response. “No that’s not it. You see,” she trailed off, trying to find the right words. “It’s really complicated.” 

“And I guess you don’t want to talk about it?”

Again, the redhead shook her head. “I’m sorry ma’am but I don’t think I,” she trailed off as she turned her head and saw just how worried her teacher looked. Her usual strict and hard gaze had softened, letting the dark bags under her one gray eye stand out even more.

Seeing how her student had lost her train of thought, Chessie took over. “Listen, I’m not going to demand that you tell me anything you don’t want to tell me. You say you’re in a difficult situation with your parents? Fine, I don’t need to know more than that.”

“Do you really mean that?” Hannah sounded genuinely surprised. In her mind, she would have thought that now that her teacher had found an opening, that she’d keep digging. 

Chessie fixed her with a surprisingly warm look on her face. “Of course, Hannah. Trust me when I tell you that I know how hard family troubles can get.”  
Although Hannah had her doubts about that, she nodded. “I see. Thank you, ma’am.”

“Don’t mention it, kid.” She sighed, getting back to her feet and dusting off the backside of her skirt. “Do you think you can stand up?”

Still reeling from being called ‘kid’ out of nowhere, Hannah took a second to answer. “Y-yes, I think so.” She used the desk behind her to slowly help herself back to her feet.

“Are you sure?” Chessie asked, sceptically eyeing her student who barely managed to stand up on her own. “If you want I can call Doctor Ashe and-”

“Ah, England, here you are!” a familiar voice suddenly rang out from the direction of the door. “It’s getting late.” Amanda spoke as she casually sauntered through the rows of desks. 

“It is?” Chessie blinked. Perplexed, she looked out of the window only to see that the sun had almost completely disappeared below the horizon. “I guess we must have lost track of time then. Curfew is going to go into effect soon, so why don’t you two get out of here?”

She could see how Hannah untensed as her friend drew near. “Y-yes, I think that would be good.” Amanda mirrored that sentiment with a nod and a wave towards Chessie. “Yeah, you’re right. Have a good one, Miss Vaughn.”

Chessie couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah you too. Don’t forget that you’ve got an essay due tomorrow.”

She had to bite back a laugh as Amanda suddenly tensed up. “Uhm, y-yeah no worries I’ll give you the best essay you’ve ever read!” With that she grabbed Hannah by the sleeve and made for the door. “We better get going now, bye!”

A second later and the door slammed shut. Chessie let out a long drawn out sigh. It had been a long day. She sagged onto one of the nearby desks and began fumbling around in her pocket. Her probing finger finally found the pill container and pulled it out.

Around an hour into her tutoring session, her vision had begun to blur and the nausea had set in again. Towards the end it felt as if she had swallowed a bucket of hot coals and her head was pounding along to the laboured beating of her heart. 

With shaking hands, she popped three pills into the palm of her hand and promptly swallowed them. The instant relief the drugs had given her earlier was slower to set in this time and not nearly as strong as it had been previously but it was enough for her to untense a little.

As her bodily functions began to stabilize, her mind went over what Hannah had told her. Family problems. That struck a cord deep within her. 

With Hannah’s words still echoing in her head, Chessie cleaned and closed up the classroom and went up to her room. She set her bag down by her bed, and set herself down at her desk.

“Parents.” she mumbled. A word she hadn’t thought about for such a long time. She felt a pang of guilt rise in her stomach, next to the lingering nausea.

She opened her desk drawer, pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, and began to write without even really thinking about it

“Dear Mom,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, hope all of you had pleasant holidays and a good new years! :)
> 
> I took a little break over the holidays which was mostly owed to me not getting my planned vacation days and working 40 hours a week. But, I am already 1/3 of the way through writing the next chapter, so you've got that to look forward for :3
> 
> Again, I've gotta say my beta reader did an amazing job, and I can't stress enough how much they do for me and this story specifically.
> 
> So, what do you think happens next? What do you think Chessie put in that letter? What kind of family troubles is Hannah Facing? IS smoking allowed on campus? 
> 
> Well only one way to find out, best stay tuned for the next one!
> 
> Thank you very much for reading, please tell me what you think down in the comments :)
> 
> -Jordan

**Author's Note:**

> Remember that OC Fic I kept teasing?
> 
> This is it.
> 
> This one is very near and dear to me because it deals with a lot of themes I have had to deal with in my personal life, albeit in not quite extreme a fashion.
> 
> Feedback on this one would be very very much appreciated.
> 
> Thank you for Reading!
> 
> -Jordan


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